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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. j| 

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5 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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>.COOPER- su 



Sir Thomas Browne, Rnt. 



From, a Portrait preserved in the Vestry of St. Peter's, 
Manor oft, Norwich. 



\\ 







TO MY FRIEND 

G. W. W. FIRTH, Esq. 

(OE NORWICH), 

THIS VOLUME OE ESSAYS IS AFEECTIONATELY 

AND ADMIRINGLY DEDICATED. 




PREFACE 




|HE indulgent reader will be kind 
enough to take the sub-title of these 
Bibliographic Essays in a somewhat 
restricted sense. The celebrated 
books discussed in them are widely known by 
name, but with the majority of them it is by 
name only. And to the general reader not only 
would their rarity be a hindrance to perusal, but, 
should he by chance procure them, the task of 
wading through the thick folios might be found 
tiresome or distasteful. 

But here he may find something of great causes, 
men, and books, in a volume which he can carry 
to the chimney corner or read on a journey, some- 
thing which it is hoped may induce him to seek 
after the treasures which lie hidden in the dusty 
and often but dimly -remembered originals. 



viii PREFACE. 

The thanks of the author are due to the editors 
of the Saturday Review and the Spectator, in 
which these papers, which have had much added 
to them, first appeared, for permitting this reprint ; 
to G. H. Lewes, Esq., Editor of the Fortnightly 
Review, for courteously withdrawing from his pages 
the title " Varia," which he had assumed long after 
the present work was advertised; and to Mr. 
Firth, who adorns the same profession as, and 
holds a like position to Sir Thomas Browne, and 
in the same city, for the photograph of a rare 
picture of that worthy knight, never before en- 
graved, a reproduction of which illustrates this 
volume. 

Few honest writers dismiss a book without sin- 
cerely wishing that it were worthier of the kind 
and judicious readers' time and study : an earnest 
expression of that wish shall close these few pre- 
liminary words. 





CONTENTS. 

Page 

| HE Angelic Doctor 1 

Nostradamus . . . 39 

irtmrrffi Thomas a Kempis and the Imitatio Christi 59 

Dr. John Faustus 79 

Quevedo . 105 

Madame J. M. B. de la Mothe Guion and 

Quietism 137 

Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Paracelsus, 

Bombast of Hohenheim 163 

Howell the Traveller 195 

Michael Scot ........ 217 

lodowick muggleton 237 

Sir Thomas Browne 251 

George Psalmanazar 283 

The Highwayman — Real and Ideal .... 309 

The Spirit World and its Literature . . . 323 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

Summa TVieobgica, Sancti Thomae Acquinatis Divince Voluntatis inter- 
pretis; Sacri^ Ordinis Praedicatorum. In qua ecclesiae Catholicce 
doctrina universa et quicquid in veterum Patrum monumentis est 
dignum observatu; quicquid etiam vel olim vocatum est, vel hodie 
vocatur ab haereticis in controversiam ; in omne ut erudite solide, et 
dilucide ita pie atque fideliter explicatur ; in tres partes ab auctore 
suo distributa. Parisiis, m.d.C.xxxviii. 

Baiter's Lives of the Saints. Dolman, 1854, 12 vols. 8vo. vol. iii. 
7th. March. Article: S. Thomas of Aquino, D.C. 

Penny Cyclopaedia. Vol. xiii. Article: Aquinas. 

An Historical and Critical Dictionary. By Monsieur Bayle. Vol. i. 
Article: Albertus Magnus ; other articles have been consulted. 

Mediaeval Philosophy ; or, a Treatise on Moral and Metaphysical 
Philosophy from the bth to the Wth Centuries. By Frederick 
Denison Maurice, M.A. London and Glasgow, 1848. 

Nouvelle Biographie Generate. Article : St, Thomas D. Aquin. 

Philobiblon, By Richard de Bury, 1832. Notes to, on Aquinas. 

Miscellaneous Works of Pope. London, 1741. Memoirs of Mar- 
tinus Scriblerus, where a selection of theses is given in imitation 
of Aquinas's style. 




THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 

A.D. 1227—1274. 

|HEKE is a huge brown folio sometimes 
met with, nothing less than the celebrated 
" Summ " of Thomas Aquinas, which has 
been a perfect harbour of refuge for all 
Eoman Catholic doubters ever since it was written, and 
which has had its effect on Protestant minds, and will yet 
do so, no doubt, for years to come. It contains somewhat 
more than eighteen hundred pages of closely-printed matter 
in double columns, and resolves, or affects to resolve — really, 
to say the truth, it is for the most part a very manly, plain- 
spoken book — all the doubts, ethical, philosophical, or re- 
ligious, that a reader, be he priest or layman, can possibly 
entertain. This great work Aquinas did not live to finish ; 
but, like the Cathedral of Cologne, or the P}Tamid of Cheops, 
although unfinished, it is still a wonder. Mr. Maurice, in 
fact, believes that, if Aquinas had conceived and entertained 
only half the doubts that he has so boldly expressed, he 
would not have lived till he was thirty, much less till he 



4 VARIA. 

was nearly fifty. But these doubts never made a lodg- 
ment within his breast; and hence he was called the 
Angelic Doctor, as JBonaventura was named the Seraphic 
Doctor. He is full of calm consciousness of Faith. Those 
who rank him amongst the infidels, again to quote Mr. 
Maurice, can have but little acquaintance with his writings. 
Yet his book is a storehouse of infidel opinions. " The 
reasoner against almost any tenet of the Eoman Catholic 
Church can be furnished on a short notice with any kind 
of weapon out of the armoury of the great Doctor." * 

To return to our book. Infidel or not infidel, the Church 
has always regarded St. Thomas as one of its great doctors 
and champions ; and the very copper-plate engraving 
which is inlaid in the title-page of my copy pictures what 
was at once almost a miracle and a conveyance to the 
Doctor of the applause and approval of his church. The 
Doctor is represented as kneeling in prayer, with his hands 
widely spread, and with a most humble expression of 
countenance; above him a little Cupid lifts from his 
studious brows his square doctor's cap, so that a nimbus, 
an aureole, a divine coronet of light, which, if we may 
believe artists, saints commonly wore, may have room to 
play, in a will-o'-the-wisp fashion, above his head. Before 
him, and in the midst of a large church of Palladian or 
Koman architecture, appears the Saviour, in clouds, in the 
midst of which clouds also are certain cherubic angels, mere 
heads and wings disporting. From the mouth of the 

* Maurice's " Medieval Philosophy." 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 5 

Saviour issues a label, on which are the words of approval : 
" Bene sc'ripsisti de me, Thoma ;" — " Well hast thou 
written concerning me, O Thomas." Perhaps the force 
of approval could no further go. 

We shall have to refer to this legend in the life of the 
saint, and may therefore, without further parley, proceed 
to consider who this great writer was; this great hull, 
this ox, the bellowing of whose learning has reached down 
the ages and affects us yet. 

The 7th of March is consecrated by the Eoman Church 
to the memory of Saint Thomas of Aquino, doctor and 
confessor, by us known as Thomas Aquinas. Few men 
were more important in their day, and his reputation has 
not died out, but has been permanent and widely spread. 
The period to which he belonged was one of great mental 
activity ; of an activity, not to say restlessness, indeed, 
much greater than many of the modern school would be 
disposed to allow. The first dawn of the Eeformation had 
not yet, it is true, become manifest, but a spirit of inquiry 
was prevalent, which was the sure precursor of an intellec- 
tual revolution. To quote Lord Brougham, speaking of a 
totally distinct but somewhat similar period : " The soldier 
might be abroad, but there was another person abroad who 
would make himself heard; yes! the schoolmaster ivas 
abroad; and while he was busy, what cared we for 
soldiers?" The ancient philosophers and poets had again 
taken root in the human mind ; Aristotle had been called 
the enemy of Christianity ; Plato had been read, cited, and 
loved ; the Bible itself had been, to the priests at least, if 



6 VABIA. 

not to the laity, unlocked. There was also a great latitude 
of speculation; and, although not a learned age in the 
sense in which we now use the term, it is probable that 
there was much more originality of thought, if less of 
scholarship, than in the succeeding century. 

As before remarked, there was scarcely any formal 
opposition, to the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. 
But the thirteenth century was not distinguished by any 
exaggerated spirit of submission. In England our own 
King John yielded reluctantly to the Papal claims — a 
measure to which he was forced rather by his own extreme 
unpopularity than by any excess of sympathy on the part 
of his subjects with the spiritual power. 

In Germany the Swabian dynasty held the imperial 
crown for a long series of years, and the emperors of that 
family were engaged in constant strife with the court of 
Rome. Seldom had the person of the pontiff been viewed 
with less respect — seldom had he been hated so completely 
as a secular prince. The ecclesiastical power gained 
ascendency at last; and the death of the young Conradin, 
and the accession of the house of Anjou to the throne of 
Naples, completed the ruin of a dynasty fruitful in men 
of a restless and aspiring genius. 

Thomas of Aquino had not, as Shiel once said, that 
bitter chill of poverty in early youth from which the heart 
so seldom recovers. He was by birth one of the counts of 
Aquino, who ranked among the noblest families of Naples . 
" They were allied," says Alban Butler, with a pride 
which is perhaps pardonable, but certainly unchristian, " to 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 7 

the Kings of Sicily and Aragon, to St. Lewis of France, 
and many other sovereign houses of Europe. Our saint's 
grandfather having married the sister of the Emperor 
Frederick I, he was himself grand-nephew to that prince, 
and second cousin to the Emperor Henry VI, and in the 
third degree to Frederick II. His father, Landulph, was 
Count of Acquino, and Lord of Loretto and Belcastro : his 
mother, Theodora, was daughter to the Count of Theate. 
The saint was horn towards the end of the year 1226, or 
at the beginning of the ensuing year ; for accounts differ. 
St. Austin observes that the most tender age is subject to 
various passions, as of impatience, choler, jealousy, and 
spite, and the like, which appear in children. No such 
thing was seen in Thomas."* 

With such a sweet disposition, it was perhaps impossible 
not to make a saint ; with such a pedigree, so exalted a 
genealogy, it was very difficult to do so. The monastic 
life was the result of Thomas's own choice, but it was most 
vigorously opposed by all his family. The lustre of the 
long line of the Counts of Aquino was not, as they 
thought, to be dimmed by the dirty habits, the bare feet, 
and the serge gown of a priest. They little dreamed of 
the lustre that was to be shed upon it by the aureole of a 
saint. 

In early life the education of the child had been 
intrusted to the Benedictine monks of Monte Cassino. 
There is some dispute as to the share the Benedictines are 

* Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints," vol. iii. pp. 43, 44. 



8 VARIA. 

entitled to in having secured so brilliant and acute an in- 
tellect for the service of the Church; and, indeed, it 
would seem that he did not entirely determine to give up 
the world until he had resided some time at Naples ; when, 
after the lapse of a short time, he entered the order of 
Saint Dominic. 

This decisive step had been long opposed by the whole 
force of entreaty, persuasion, threat, trick, cajolery, and 
even force, of Aquinas's family. All manner of fond 
caresses, entreaties, and prayers were used by his mother 
to dissuade him from becoming a monk, and, says Butler, 
with a quaint sadness, " Nature made her eloquent 
and pathetic." His sisters, too, pleaded with her ; they 
omitted nothing that flesh and blood could inspire on 
such an occasion, and represented to him the danger of 
causing the death of his mother by grief. But nothing 
could move Thomas ; on the contrary, if we may credit his 
biographers, he rather moved his sisters than they him, 
for they both yielded to the force of his reasons for quit- 
ting the world, and by his persuasion devoted themselves 
to a sincere practice of piety. 

In sweet solitude, Thomas prepared himself for his 
future life in company with three books, a Bible, Aris- 
totle's Logics, and the works of the Master of the Sentences ; 
this quietude, however, enraged his brothers Landulph 
and Reynold, who were young and somewhat wild 
men, soldiers who had returned from the army of the 
emperor, and they sought to obtain that by force which 
the mother had failed to gain by entreaties ; they bore 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 9 

away the young novice, tore up his habit, and shut him 
up in a solitary tower. Herein, like the philosopher of 
old, he was to undergo a strong temptation, and to succeed 
in overcoming it. But Alban Butler shall tell what this 
was : " The devil suggested to these young officers a new 
artifice to prevent him from pursuing his vocation. They 
secretly introduced into his chamber one of the most 
beautiful and most insinuating young strumpets of the 
country, promising her a considerable reward in case she 
could draw him into sin ; she employed all the arms of 
Satan to succeed in so detestable a design. The saint, 
alarmed and affrighted at the danger, profoundly humbled 
himself, and cried out to God most earnestly for his pro- 
tection ; then snatching up a firebrand struck her with it 
and drove her out of his chamber. After this victory, not 
moved with pride, but blushing with confusion at having 
been so basely assaulted, he fell on his knees and thanked 
God for his merciful preservation." 

The story would hardly be complete without a vision. 
Falling asleep, he dreamt that two angels tied him round 
the loins with a cord, or, if we like it better, two angels did 
really visit him, and girded him so tightly with a cord 
that they awakened him and made him cry out. His 
guards ran in, but he kept the secret to himself. One 
heroic victory of this kind, adds Butler, sometimes obtains 
of God a recompense and a triumph. As St. Paul was 
let down from the city walls in a basket, so was Thomas 
from his tower by his sister, who knew that his mother, 
the countess, no longer opposed his being a monk. He 



10 VARIA. 

was received with joy by his brethren the Dominicans of 
Naples, and from that time he was suffered to pursue his 
desires in peace. 

Albertus Magnus was then teaching at Cologne, and 
the two orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic were as yet 
in the full vigour of youth. Almost every man of intellect 
was in that day a priest, although perhaps only a priest in 
name ; and one cannot wonder at the unremitting watch- 
fulness and care with which his future career was marked 
out by the chiefs of this powerful spiritual corporation. 

The Benedictines, however, are no doubt entitled to 
some credit in forming the mind of the youthful aspirant. 
His biographers are never weary of boasting how pious 
and how modest he was from the time of his earliest 
youth. His great talent and gentle disposition seem to have 
attracted considerable notice, and no pains were probably 
spared to secure such abilities for the service of the Church. 

Be this as it may, St. Thomas of Aquino has been 
always recognized as one of the glories of the Dominican 
order. Under the care of the general of this order, he was 
sent to Paris, and from Paris to Cologne ; there he first 
listened to Albert the Great, a man small in stature and 
weak in body, but great indeed in mind. He ranked 
amongst the most learned men of the age, and was en- 
dowed with a wonderful vivacity and quickness of intellect. 
Like most of the learned of his day, he attempted to reach 
the extreme limits of the knowable, and to him was at- 
tached, in the minds of the vulgar at least, the credit of 
being a magician. 



THE ANGELIO DOCTOR. 11 

" I could easily believe/' says Bayle, speaking of this 
charge, " that, as he understood mathematics, he had made 
a head the springs whereof might form some articulate 
sounds ; but what a folly to found an accusation of magic 
on this !"* Polydore Vergil, Pope Sylvester, Robert of 
Lincoln, and Friar Bacon had like heads. Naude tells 
us that Albertus Magnus was more ingenious than these 
people ; for he formed a whole man, having worked for 
thrice ten years with the greatest diligence to forge him 
under the divers constellations, which the credulous reader, 
if he look into Old Moore's or Zadkiel's almanacs of the 
present day, will find govern the various parts of the 
body. Some of the writers of the time say that this 
man was made of flesh,f but by art, and not by nature ; 
a fact " judged impossible by modern writers." It was 
called the Andro'is of Albertus Magnus ; and the tale is 
only introduced here because it is said, to his honour, that 
Thomas Aquinas broke it in pieces, he being, we are told, 
" irritated at its great tittle-tattle." If any such figure did 
exist, more probably he did so from a belief that such an 
image was wickedly imagined and made. Albertus was 
accused of turning winter into spring, of possessing magical 
books, of being the first man-midwife, and, by certain 
magical performances, of preserving his own body from 
corruption. In a note Bayle quotes Father Raynaud, who 
asserts that St. Thomas never said that he broke the 



* Bayle's Dictionary, article '• Albertus Magnus." 

t Bayle quotes Henri de Assia and Bartholomew Sybilla. 



12 VARIA. 

brazen head of Albertus, and that the asserted miracles 
are false exaggerations or wholly fictitious.* 

Aquinas was, if not the favourite, the most celebrated 
scholar of Albertus; but, as Alban Butler tells us, his 
humility prevented him from showing how really advanced 
he was in learning. His fellow-scholars called him the 
Great Sicilian, the Dumb Ox. One day, however, the 
master observed, in the hearing of all, " We call him the 
great Sicilian ox, but that ox will make his lowings heard 
throughout Christendom." It is also said that one of his 
companions proposed, out of pity to his supposed inca- 
pacity, to go over his lessons and explain them to him. 
The saint submitted, through meekness, to this arrange- 
ment. It happened one day, however, that his friend 
found something which he was unable to understand, 
much less to explain. Thomas solved the difficulty in 
the most lucid manner, and his fellow- student hence- 
forward was content to learn from him. This story seems 
to accord with what we know of his character. Every 
allowance must be made for the tendency of ecclesiastical 
biographers to magnify the virtues of the spiritual hero 
whose character they are depicting. But, after making 
every possible deduction for party-spirit, enough remains 
to render it doubtful whether any of the doctors of the 
Reformed Church were actuated at any time by a more 



* Hyems in veris amcenitatem versa et caput ameum articulate 
loquens . . . sunt ableganda tanquam conficta et falso jac- 
tata de tanto viro ; libri autem magicii sunt supposititii, &c. 



THE ANGELIQ DOCTOR. 13 

Christian spirit than that which inspired the Dominican 
monk, of whose life and works we are endeavouring to 
give some brief notice. 

His master, Albertns Magnus, was a man of very 
different character. He was less of a theologian, and 
more of a philosopher. Some hints were occasionally thrown 
out, even in his lifetime, that he was an ardent student 
of the occult sciences. Being associated with the Angelic 
Doctor, St. Thomas, for so many years, he doubtless exer- 
cised great influence in the development of. his young 
friend's character, and this, perhaps, would account for 
many of the doubts expressed in Aquinas's great work. 
He survived his pupil seven years. 

A legend which was current concerning Albertus 
Magnus shows how widely he differed from the Angelic 
Doctor. Many years before his death he refrained from 
teaching. The reason for this was given in this wise : 
" When young, he had a difficulty even in mastering the 
most elementary studies necessary for the ecclesiastical 
profession. He was almost in despair, when the Holy 
Virgin appeared to him and asked him in which branch 
of learning he most wished to excel, — in theology or 
in philosophy. Albert made choice of philosophy* His 
request was granted ; but the Virgin added that, as a 
punishment for not choosing theology, before his death 
he would relapse into his former stupidity. This accord- 
ingly happened three years before his death. He sud- 
denly stopped short while he was delivering a lecture, 
and, being unable to collect his ideas, he at length under- 



14 VARIA. 

stood that the time had arrived when the prediction should 
be fulfilled." 

This story is probably fabulous ; we quote it to show 
that, in the opinion of his age, Albertus Magnus was 
less a theologian than a philosopher. It was perhaps 
fortunate for his pupil that such happened to be the 
case. 

Thomas Aquinas was of a devout disposition, and had 
even some tendency to mysticism. It is probable that his 
reasoning powers would scarcely have been so fully deve- 
loped as they were, if he had not had a preceptor rather 
more secular in his inclinations than himself. 

After a few years Albertus Magnus was summoned to 
Paris, and his disciple Thomas accompanied him. In 
1248 the Dominican order resolved to establish theolo- 
gical seminaries in various parts of Europe. Four of 
these were, Cologne, Montpellier, Bologna, and Oxford. 
Albertus Magnus was appointed to a professorship at 
Cologne, and Thomas Aquinas, being then twenty-two 
years of age, was also intrusted with the office of teacher. 
He now began to compose his first works, which con- 
sisted of commentaries on the Ethics, and other philoso- 
phical works, of Aristotle. About this time he appears 
to have been subject to fits of religious enthusiasm. In 
saying mass, according to Alban Butler, he seemed to be 
in raptures, and often quite dissolved in tears. 

It is therefore perhaps to this period of his life that we 
must assign the occasion of the miraculous vision which is 
illustrated, in the manner already described, on the title- 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 15 

page of the folio edition of the " Summa Theologica." It 

should he premised, Tocco relates, according to Butler, that 

the vision took place somewhat later in the saint's life, 

when, indeed, he was at Naples, after having composed 

the first part of his " Summa Theologica" at Bologna; 

certain it is, however, that, during the rapt and visionary 

state into which fervent prayer frequently threw this good 

man, Dominick Caserte " beheld him, while in fervent 

prayer, raised from the ground, and heard a voice from 

the crucifix directed to him in these words, ' Bene scrip- 

sisti de me, Thoma : quam mercedem accipies?' 'Non 

aliam, nisi te, Domine.' — ' Well hast thou written of me, 

O Thomas : what reward wilt thou accept ? ' ' No other 

than thyself, O Lord,' said the devoted priest." Taking 

the story at its lowest possible value, and believing that, 

like the Egyptian priests, which Alban Butler tells his 

readers addressed their devotees from hollow cells made 

secretly behind the images, the priests at Naples imposed 

upon their devout and learned dupe in order to encourage 

him in his wonderful undertaking, we still must admire the 

sweet devotion and meekness of the rapt answer. 

In 1257, being then thirty-one years old, Aquinas was 
admitted Doctor at Paris. It had in the meantime not 
gone well with his family. The two young soldiers who 
had played the saint so scurvy a trick had become sincere 
penitents, and had left the emperor's service, who, in 
revenge, burnt Aquino and put Reynold, the younger of 
the two, to death, in the year 1250. After Aquinas was 
admitted doctor, the professors of the University of Paris, 



16 VABIA. 

then disputing about that for which their present successors 
would care very little, determined, in the year 1258, to 
consult Aquinas upon the ticklish point " of the accidents 
remaining really, or only in appearance, in the Blessed 
Sacrament of the Altar." The young Doctor, not puffed 
up by such an honour, wrote the treatise still extant, and 
laid it on the altar. "While the saint remained in prayer 
on this occasion, some of his brethren saw him lifted up 
from the ground."* 

It is probable that while at Paris the whole mind of 
Aquinas, not given to devotion, was concentrated on his 
great book, the " Summa Theologica." There is a good 
story told of the simplicity of the man, the absence of 
mind of the scholar, and the fervour of the saint. The 
King of France, St. Lewis, had so great an esteem for the 
young Doctor that he often invited him to. his table, and 
moreover consulted him in his affairs of state. Butler is 
careful to tell us that the saint avoided the honour of 
dining with the king as often as he could, and that when 
obliged to be at court, " appeared there as recollected (col- 
lected ?) as if in the convent." One day, dining with St. 
Lewis, the Doctor, with an energetic and triumphant 
movement, cried out, u Conclusum est contra Manichseos ;" 
" It is conclusively against the Manichees." The prior 
of the convent, astonished at these words, bade the priest 
be still, and remember where he was. The good king, 
however, fearful that the world might lose so valuable an 

* Alban Butler, " Lives of the Saints," vol. iii. p. 53. 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 17 

argument — for the Manichees were not overthrown every 
day — begged the saint to write it down, or, indeed, accord- 
ing to Tocco, caused his secretary to write it down for him. 
Rabelais, who in every story seized at once the point 
most open to ridicule, alludes to one regarding Aquinas, 
which Duchat supplies in the notes to the chapter 
(Pantagruel, book iii. chap. 2) where the allusion occurs. 
Pan urge delivers a lecture upon the wisdom of eating 
green corn ; that is, of spending one's revenue before it is 
due. " I may very justly say of you, as Cato did o"f Albidius, 
who, after he had by a most extravagant expense wasted 
all his goods but one house, fairly set it on fire, that 
the better he might cry, Consummatum est ! Even as 
since his time St. Thomas Aquinas did when he had 
eaten up the whole lamprey, although there was no neces- 
sity for it." This lamprey story arose from an incident 
at the table of St. Lewis. Thomas Aquinas was thereto 
invited. For the king there was served up a fine lamprey ; 
and, says Duchat, " Thomas, whom it seems no other time 
but that would serve to compose his hymn on the Holy 
Sacrament, had, at the profoundness of his meditation, 
eaten up the whole of the lamprey, which was designed for 
the king, and had made an end of this hymn and the fish 
both together. Thomas, overjoyed at having finished so 
elaborate a poem, cried out in an ecstasy, Consummatum 
est ! ' It is finished !' The company who had seen Thomas 
play a good knife, and lay about him to some tune, but 
knew nothing of his mental employment, fancied that these 
Latin words related to his gallant performance in demolish- 



18 VARIA. 

ing the lamprey, and looked upon him as a very profane 
person for applying to a piece of unmannerly epicurism 
the words which each of them knew to he spoken by our 
Saviour when expiring on the cross."* 

There is yet another story equally good, and indeed, to a 
Protestant mind, more pregnant, which it is needless to say 
Alban Butler does not relate. One day, when the learned 
and saintly doctor was conversing with Pope Innocent IV, 
that Pontiff, on some money being brought in, probably 
some large sum which excited the Pope's pride, said, " You 
see that age of the Church is past, when she could say, 
' Silver and gold have I none.' " " Yes, holy father," an- 
swered Aquinas ; " and the day is also past when she could 
say to the paralytic, ' Take up thy bed, and walk.' " 

Aquinas seems to have been the acknowledged chief 
of his party and age. Whatever he did, he did well. 
He wrote in verse as well as in prose ; and some of the 
hymns yet sung in the Eomish Church are by him. His 
works were numerous. His commentary on the four 
books of Peter Lombard, commonly called the Master of 
Sentences, is well known. As the claim of Thomas a 
Kempis to the authorship of the "Imitatio Christi" is dis- 
puted, and indeed with great reason, so, perhaps with much 
less reason, is the claim of Aquinas to the authorship of 
the " Summa Theologica." But there is no doubt that the 
theological opinions of that work were his ; and perhaps the 



* Duchat, Notes to Rabelais' works. Translated by Sir Thomas 
Urquhart and Motteux. 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 19 

most important and most memorable of them is the saint's 
assertion of the supreme and irresistible efficacy of the 
Divine Grace. This doctrine, surely a biblical one, or, as 
our modern phraseology would have it, an evangelical one, 
was violently opposed by Duns Scotus ; and the followers 
of the two teachers disputed amongst themselves for ages, 
and do in fact dispute now, 'being ranked under the names 
of their respective leaders as Thomists and Scotists. 

In the year 1265 Pope Clement IV became head of the 
Church ; but this event produced no change in ,the regard 
shown by the Sovereign Pontiff for, or in the position of, 
Aquinas. The new Pope was a man distinguished by great 
conscientiousness, if we may judge from a letter written to 
one of his relations on his accession to the Papal chair ; 
and one of his first acts was to offer to Aquinas the 
Archbishopric of Naples. 

In 1269 Aquinas returned to Paris, but was soon per- 
suaded to revisit Italy, which he never again quitted. The 
Swabian dynasty had received its death-blow. The young 
Conradin had been executed on a public scaffold, in view 
of his own subjects and those of his family, and the for- 
tunes of the house of Aquino were in the ascendant. 
Charles of Anjou had little mildness or devotion in his 
character, and could have had but little sympathy with a 
student and a devotee. He made, however, urgent en- 
treaties that Aquinas should return to Italy, and he, pro- 
bably influenced by his family, took up his final abode at 
Naples. 

It was not, however, for long ; hard study and incessant 



20 VABIA. 

labour, such as must have been undertaken to produce 
only one work out of many, the " Summa Theologica," had 
their natural effect upon the ascetic workman, which was 
probably hastened by devotional austerities. Not only was 
Aquinas a saint in his book and with his pen, but, not 
content with such work, with his voice and preaching he 
persuaded many. So earnest was he that the tears of the 
auditory flowed so abundantly that the preacher oftentimes 
was obliged to halt for awhile in his discourse. Nor did 
the wonders of the saint stop at mere oracular persuasion. 
William of Tocco, who relates that in his prayer Aquinas 
was lifted from earth, tells us that, as he one Sunday 
came from church, a woman touching merely the edge of 
his garment was cured. Two Rabbins were converted 
miraculously ; disputing with them one day, and agreeing 
to resume the argument on the morrow, Aquinas spent 
the night at the foot of the altar. The next morning his 
two most obstinate opponents came, not again to dispute, 
but to embrace the faith of which their interlocutor was so 
ardent a defender. In the year 1263, Aquinas had as- 
sisted at the fortieth general chapter of the Dominicans in 
London, and soon after had solicited and obtained his dis- 
missal from teaching, rejoicing inwardly to be once more 
a private religious man. 

From the sixth day of December, 1273, to that of his 
death, the seventh of March following, Aquinas acted as one 
with whom the world had passed away. He neither wrote 
nor dictated anything, but gave himself up entirely to 
private meditation. Pope Gregory X having called a 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 21 

general council, with the double purpose of extinguishing 
the Greek schism and raising succours to defend the Holy 
Land against the Saracens, a brief was directed to 
Aquinas ordering him to defend the faith against the 
Greek schismatics. But this was not to be. The council 
was appointed to meet on the 1st of May, 1274, at Lyons, 
and the ambassadors of Michael Palseologus, with the 
Greek prelates, were to be present. Aquinas, sick in 
body, set out on his journey, but was forced to stop at Fossa 
Nuova, a famous Cistercian abbey in the diocese of Terra- 
cina. Here, practising austerities which neither reason nor 
faith could demand in one over-pressed with fever, he 
prepared to die. As he was carried into the cloister 
whence he never went alive, he repeated part of the 131st 
Psalm, — " This is my rest for ages without end;" and he 
had continually on his lips a pious sentence from the 
Confessions of St. Augustine, wherein that saint professes 
his hunger for heaven and the Lord. The monks begged 
the Angelic Doctor to dictate an exposition of the Canticles 
in imitation of St. Bernard. " Give me," said he, " but 
St. Bernard's spirit, and I will obey." He commenced, 
however, wearied out by the importunities of the monks, 
an exposition of " that most mysterious of all the divine 
books," the Canticles, but halted after a few lines, too 
weak to proceed any further. 

After having received absolution most piously, he 
desired the viaticum, and, to receive it, begged to be taken 
off his bed and laid in ashes on the floor. Then, in tears, and 
with the most tender devotion, he received the sacraments 



22 VARIA. 

and stammered out his belief. His last words, after thanks 
to the abbot and brethren, were in answer to the question 
"How one might always live faithful to God's grace." 
" Best assured/' said he, "that he who will always walk 
faithfully in His presence, always ready to give Him an 
account of his actions, shall never be separated from Him 
by consenting to sin." 

After this came upon him the change we must all undergo ; 
he died in his forty- eighth year. He is described as a 
tall, well-proportioned man, active and of great endurance. 
His literary labour was immense ; not only are his works 
full of much thought, but they are so vast that they extend 
to nineteen folio volumes compactly printed. The " Summa 
Theologica" alone is a work which is astounding to con- 
template. Aquinas, a learned theological chief justice, 
hears the pros and cons, and pronounces judgment upon 
everything. His book is the great court of conscience, 
into which everything is brought. It resembles in some 
fashion Jeremy Taylor's " Ductor Dubitantium," but is 
written with much more boldness and less doubt. Aquinas 
never shuns anything ; it is true that he always sums up 
favourably to religion, morality, and the Holy Roman 
Catholic Church : but there is no getting into holes and 
corners, and very little paltering with the truth. There 
is no doubt about the mind of the Angelic Doctor : what 
he says he means and believes ; and the chances are that 
he made those who read him believe with him. 

It seems somewhat curious that Bishop Taylor did 
not refer to the work of Aquinas, in the preface to his 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 23 

" Ductor Dubitantium/' or the " Rule of Conscience in all 
her general measures, serving as a great instrument for the 
determination of cases of conscience" — a work dedicated, 
by the way, to one to whom it should have been of use, 
Charles II. But, though the two works provoke a remem- 
brance of each other, they are, in reality, very different. 
" Some of the Lutherans," says Taylor, " have indeed 
done something of this kind, which is well; Balduinus, 
Bidenbachius, Dedekanus, Konig, and the abbreviator of 
Gerard. But yet one needs remain, and we cannot be well 
supplied out of the Boman storehouses ; for, though there 
the staple is, and very many excellent things exposed to 
view, yet we have found the merchants to be deceivers, 
and the wares too often falsified."* 

He then quotes from Emanuel Sa, and remarks that 
the Romanists do up " so many boxes of poyson in their 
repositories under the same paintings and specious titles, 
that few can distinguish ministeries of health from those 
of death — for who can safely trust the guide that tells 
him 'that it is no deadly thing to steal/ -f or privately 
to take a thing that is not great from one's father?" But 
the Romanists had made a great advance in casuistry 
from the days of simple Thomas Aquinas, who for the 
most part palters not nor deceiveth. Xor is the golden- 
mouthed preacher, the sweet Shakespeare of divines, him- 
self free from too much casuistry. There is something 



* Preface to "Ductor Dubitantium," 3rd edition, 1665. 
j Emanuel Sa, Aphor. V. Furtum. 



24 VAMIA. 

about lying in his cases of conscience which might be ad- 
vantageous to a lawyer or to a careless witness, but would 
surely be condemned by the judge. Equivocation, which 
our copy-books have long told us " is the worst of lies/' 
Taylor tells us " may be allowed for great charity/' and is 
then " only a crime when it is against justice and charity" 
— that is, he allows it. Certain it is, however, that we 
condone Taylor's offence when he tells us his stories ; 
how one man, a Greek, saved his brother by saying he 
lay oli tj7 vhy 9 " somewhere in the wood," when he had hid 
him under a wood-pile, and of another, Titius, father of 
Caius, who concealed his father in a tub, and told the cut- 
throats that joatrem in cloliolo lateri, the Latin for a 
little tub, meaning also a hill near Rome.* But if a man 
has a right to ask such questions, such as a magistrate, 
says our Ductor, we have no right to answer him ambigu- 
ously. Thus, if the magistrate asks if Titius be at home, 
we have no right to say Titius non est clomi, the est 
leading to the inference Titius does not eat at home, using 
the word in a right sense, but in a sense less common. The 
bishop relates with great indignation also that story of a 
Spanish governor who promised a lady to give her her 
husband if she would submit to his desires. But, these ob- 
tained, the governor gives the husband indeed, but only his 
dead body newly slain. The lady complains, and tells her 
misfortune to Gonzaga, the Spanish general, who, finding 
it to be true, makes the governor marry the lady, that she 

* " Ductor Dubitantium," bk. iii. chap. 2, p. 500. 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR, 25 

might be recompensed by his estate, and then the same 
day causes the governor to lose his head, to pay, says the 
bishop, " for his dishonourable falsehood and bloudy lie. 
It was a justice worthy of a great prince ; and the reward 
was justly paid to such cruel equivocation."* 

Leaving this disquisition, for which the story cited by 
Taylor from worthy John Chokier it is hoped will make 
amends, it may be as well to give the reader a specimen of 
Aquinas's work. It is one memorable and valuable for 
having survived countless mutations, ecclesiastical as well as 
temporal, and which really deserves the honour in which 
so many ages and scholars of such varied shades of faith 
have held it in. The " Summa Theologica " was, according 
to the author's own statement, written chiefly for the in- 
struction of young students of theology. It was adopted 
by the Church of Rome as a text-book, and from the first 
considered to be a most masterly exposition of theology. 
How little the lapse of centuries has diminished its repu- 
tation the following statement will show. 

The " Summa" has never been a scarce fyook ; in one 
form or another it can at any time be purchased for a mode- 
rate sum. The editions in one volume, folio, are perhaps 
the most common, but they are not we believe so old as those 
in five or six, large duodecimo. This form, however, is of 
little value in the eyes of the book-hunter. The first edition 
of the entire works of Thomas Aquinas was published at 
Koine, in 19 folio volumes, in 1570-71. This contains the 

» 

* "Ductor Dubitantium," bk. iii. chap. 2, p. 502. 



26 VABIA. 

only complete collection of his works. Portions of the 
" Summa " had been published long previously, but were 
usually sold at a high price. The best edition of the 
" Summa Theologica " is that published at Rome (1773). 
It is beautifully printed, and, besides other matter, 
contains the commentaries of the celebrated Thomas 
de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan. A very pretty edition of the 
work has been lately published at Parma. In 1851-4 a 
translation was brought out by the Abbe Drioux. It 
seems to be very well executed, and has the formal com- 
mendations of his ecclesiastical superiors. Another 
version is in progress. It is well also to observe that a 
work entitled, " Summa, Sancti Thomae hodiernis Academi- 
arum moribus accommodata sive Cursus Theologiae juxta 
mentem Divi Thoma3," has passed through several editions. 
I do not know what amount of circulation this work has 
enjoyed, or what amount of reputation it possesses. The 
fact of its having passed through several editions shows 
that it must possess some merit. 

Professor Maurice gives, in his " Mediaeval Philosophy," 
an elaborate analysis of the character rather than the con- 
tents of the i( Summa," which latter really could not be well 
done in modern books, since it requires five elaborate in- 
dexes to direct the reader to the various questions ; but 
Professor Maurice's aim is so different from that of the 
present writer, that he cannot quote from his work with 
advantage, or he would rather avail himself of the words 
of so careful a scholar than of his own. Let us take, 
therefore, the first question St. Thomas treats of ; it will 
show his boldness, and serve us as well as any other. 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 27 

" The First Question. 

Of the holy doctrine ; what it is and how far it extends : 
divided into ten articles. 
And as our intention is bounded within certain limits, 
it is first necessary to investigate the holy doctrine, what 
it is, and how far it does extend, about which there are 
these ten queries : — 

if Primo, on the necessity of this doctrine. 

if Secundo, whether it be a science. 

if Tertio, whether it be one or many. 

if Quarto, whether it be speculative or practical. 

if Quinto, its comparison with other sciences. 

if Sexto, whether it be wisdom. 

if Septimo, whether God be its subject. 

if Octavo, whether it be argumentative. 

if Nono, whether it ought to be treated metaphorically 

or symbolically. 
if Whether the Holy Scriptures are to be expounded 
according to the many meanings (jplures sensus) 
of this doctrine." 

Taking up this, which very fitly opens his book, but of 
which modern readers who take the Bible as their guide 
will not care to know much, Aquinas puts his case, ad 
jorimum, to the first I answer ; then in another paragraph 
he adds, prater ea, moreover there is such and such to be 
said ; next he puts the contrary, and very fairly too, sed 
contra est ; and finally he sums up under the title Con- 
clusio. Each sentence he commences with, Bespondeo dicen- 
dum, I answer that it must be held. In his third article, 



28 VARIA. 

whether there be a God, Utrurn JDeus sit, he is very bold ; 
nor is he less so when he takes up the question whether 
there be a soul, An sit anima. Indeed, this absorbing, 
wonderful question he chases up and down and into all sorts 
of holes and corners, proves that the soul is not of the body, 
triumphs over the Sadducees, and, in short, is in no way 
to be confounded with that scholar of our early dramatist,* 
who, after puzzling all night as to his soul's being, knew 
as little of it as his dog : — 



Still my spaniel slept, 



And still I held converse with Zabarell, 

Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw 

Of Antick Donate : still my spaniel slept. 

Still on I went, first an sit anima ; 

Then, as it were mortal. hold, hold ; at that 

They're at brain buffets, fell by the ears amain 

Pell mell together ; still my spaniel slept. 

Then whether it were corporal, or local, fixt, 

Ex traduce, but whether 't had free will 

Or no ; hot philosophers 

Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt, 

I staggered, knew not which was former part, 

But thought, quoted, read, observed, and pried, 

Stuft noting books : and still my spaniel slept. 

At length he wak'd and yawn'd ; and by yon sky, 

For aught I know, he knew as much as I." 

Had the scholar held, as he affirms, much converse with 
Aquinas, his doubts as to that knotty point, a point which 
Moses himself leaves untouched, would surely have been 
solved. For a careful reader of the " Summa " will agree 



John Marston, author of the " Malcontent," &c. 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 29 

that the verdict of Mr. Maurice is not overrated. " So 
long," says that acute writer, " as we meet Aquinas on his 
own ground he is invincible. When jou pass from him 
to the actual tumult of the conscience, and to the living 
facts of Scripture which respond to them, jou are inclined 
to pronounce him utterly feeble." * 

Scarcely should we say utterly feeble, although the 
doctrine of the schools may be weak beside the after-ex- 
perience of life, or the teachings of the Bible. Aquinas 
does not shirk anything, as we have before hinted. Let us 
take, for example, Mr. Maurice's own account of his manner 
of treating the natural and human questions which occur 
to us all concerning the power of God. There are seven 
articles in the first question on the nature of this power. 
"The third of these is, and it begs the question which 
Hume denied, that of miracles, thus ; whether those 
things which are impossible to nature are possible to God?" 
Aquinas gives nine reasons for the negative opinion. The 
first is, that, since God is the mover of nature, he cannot 
act contrary to nature. The second is, that the first 
principle in all demonstration, that affirmatives and ne- 
gatives are not true, at the same time applies to nature, 
and that God cannot cause a negative and an affirmative to 
be true at the same time. The third article is very like 
the second : there are two principles subject to God — reason 
and nature ; but God cannot do anything which is impos- 
sible to reason, therefore he cannot do anything which is 

* Maurice's " Mediaeval Philosophy." 



30 VABIA. 

in itself impossible to nature. The fourth is that what 
the false and the true are to knowledge, the possible and 
the impossible are to work ; but that which is false in 
nature God cannot know, therefore what is impossible in 
nature God cannot work. The fifth is more noble, and 
perhaps more quibbling : what is proved of any one thing 
is proved of all similar things ; as, if it is demonstrated of 
one triangle that its three angles are equal to two right 
angles, that is true of all. But there is an impossibility 
in God, to wit, that he should be able to do a thing, and 
not be able to do a thing ; therefore, if there is some im- 
possibility in nature which he cannot do, it would seem 
that he can do no impossibility. In support of this follow 
nine reasons, the ninth resting on quotations from Jerome, 
Augustine, and Aristotle. 

Then there are eight reasons on the other side ; and 
lastly, the Doctor himself appears. He has in this case to 
reply both to the defendant's counsel and to the plaintiff's, 
and he does this with the utmost skill, and finally delivers 
a verdict from which the most orthodox will not dissent. 
All subjects he deals with in the same way, with great 
brevity, force, and conciseness. Let us now take one 
whole article as a specimen of the manner in which he 
deals with a question which has perhaps caused more blood- 
shed in, and scandal against, the Eoman Church than any 
other. 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 31 

"Article VIII. 
Whether infidels are to be compelled to embrace the faith. 

We now proceed to the eighth article.* It may be 
seen that infidels are by no means to be forced to embrace 
the faith. For we are told in the thirteenth of Matthew f 
that there was a certain husbandman" — (here, by the way, 
rendered by the word made so familiar by Punch, pater- 
familias), " in whose fields there were tares sown, and they 
sought of him, saying, ' Whether shall we go a'ncl gather 
them V and he answered, ' No ! lest by chance, as ye 
gather the tares, ye should also pull up the wheat.' And 
hereon, says Chrysostom, these things saith the Lord, 
prohibiting us to slay others. Nor is it right to slay 
heretics, because, if you kill them, many of the faithful 
saints (sanctorum) must also be overthrown ; therefore it 
seemeth, by a like reasoning, that the infidels are by no 
means to be compelled to embrace the faith. 

11 2. Moreover, in the Decretals (dis. 45, c. De Juda3is) 
it is said, the Holy Synod has thus taught concerning the 
Jews, that none shall henceforward be brought to belief 
by force. Therefore, by a parity of reason, no other infi- 
dels are to be forced to believe. 

H 3. Moreover, Augustin saith that no unwilling man 



* That is, of a series of questions all relating to the unfaithful, ad 
infidehs; thus Art. VII. is whether one may dispute publicly with 
infidels? Art. V. whether there be many kinds of infidelity? 

t Matt. xiii. 24, et seq. 



32 VARIA. 

is able to believe, unless he first become willing ; but it is 
not possible to force the will; therefore infidels are not 
to be forced to believe. 

f[ 4. Moreover, Ezekiel xviii. saith, speaking as if he 
were God (ex persona Dei), ' I do not wish the death of a 
sinner ; ' and we ought, as we have before said, to con- 
form our will to the Divine will, therefore we ought not to 
wish that infidels should be killed. 

But, opposed to this, it is said, Luke xiv : ' Go out 
into the highways and lanes, and compel them to come in, 
that my house may be filled ; ? now men, into the house 
of God, that is, into his Holy Church, enter by faith. 
Therefore, some are to be compelled to embrace the 
faith. 

Conclusion. 

Infidels who have never embraced the faith, such as Jews 
and Gentiles, are by no means to he compelled to do so ; 
heretics and apostates are to be compelled, so that they 
may fulfil what they have promised. 

I answer that it must be said that there are certain 
of the infidels who have never embraced the faith, and are 
by no means to be forced to do so, because to believe is an 
action of the will, yet they are to be compelled by the 
faithful if they have the means of doing so (si adsit facu\- 
tas), that they hinder not the faith, either by blasphemy 
or false persuasion, or by open persecution. And it is on 
this account that the faithful soldiers of Christ often carry 
on war against the infidels, not indeed that they should 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR, 33 

compel them to believe (for when they have subdued them 
and hold them captive, they leave them free to believe or 
not), but on this account, that they may force them not to 
hinder the propagation of the faith of Christ. Some, in- 
deed, are truly infidels who, when they have embraced the 
faith, profess it merely as heretics and some as apostates, 
and these are indeed bodily to be forced and compelled, 
that they may fulfil what they have promised, and renew 
that which they once undertook." 

Then follow four paragraphs, headed, " Ad Primum," 
" Ad Secundum/' &c, in which the same reasoning is repre- 
sented and insisted on. In the fourth and last the Angelic 
Doctor shows that Holy Mother Church, although she can be 
meek as a brooding dove to her golden couplets, also holds 
in her hand concealed thunder, ready to be launched at the 
heretics. " Ad Quartum. Since in the same epistle Augus- 
tin saith [he has just quoted the 48th epistle of Augustin], 
6 Not one of us wishes any of the heretics to perish ; but as 
the house of David could not have peace unless his son 
Absalom was slain in that war which he carried on against 
his father, so the Catholic Church, if she draws together a 
remnant (cceteros aliquorum) for perdition, soothes the 
grief of her maternal heart by the salvation of so many 
people.' ' : (2nd part of Part Second of the Summa, quest. 
10, art. viii.) 

Almost every question taken up by Aquinas is of intense 
interest. Some of them, perhaps, seem to modern ears to be 
mere blasphemies, such is their plainness ; but the Angel 
of the Schools smoothes away difficulties, and generally 

D 



34 VAR1A. 

manages to decide rightly. Thus, in the second article of 
the seventy-ninth question of his first part, he debates 
" Whether the act of sinning comes from God" — that is, 
in plainer language, whether God be guilty of sin. Of 
course he concludes that God is guiltless ; but he says that 
the will of God is the cause of the act of sinning (ergo 
voluntas Dei est causa actus peccati) ; and he sums up that 
the transgressor's act is necessary to God, hut the defect is 
in the thing created. The whole of the question trenches 
upon the most delicate grounds, for which the utmost tact — 
and it is but fair to say that Aquinas has shown this — is 
necessary to prevent the writer from committing himself. 
The question is on the outward causes of sin ; and here the 
boldness of the faith of Aquinas, who, believing utterly and 
without doubt in the power of God, yet dared to impute to 
him evil, is much to be admired. He divides the causes 
of sin into four articles — first, from God ; secondly, from 
the devil ; thirdly, from man. 

" Et prima, ex parte Dei. Secundo, ex parte Diaboli. 
Tertio, ex parte hominis." 

And upon this he builds four questions : — 
" H Primo, whether God be the cause of sin ? 

1F Secundo, whether the sinful act be from God ? 

1T Tertio, whether God be the cause of blindness and 
hardness of heart. 

IT Quarto, whether these things be ordained for the 
salvation of those who are blind and hard-hearted." 

Let us turn to a less troublesome question. The Angelic 
Doctor seems to have thought woman inferior to man, and 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 35 

adopted, says Bayle, in a note on Dr. Simon Gediccus, 
Aristotle's opinion: "Hanc opinionem adoptavit Thomas/' 
part I, quest. 92, art. and lib. 3, c. gentes ; but he was 
not rude enough to deny with the Italian cited by Bayle 
that women have no souls — che le clonne non Tiabbino ani- 
ma — which the author, says the compiler of the " Historical 
Dictionary/' endeavours to prove by several passages of the 
Holy Scriptures, and which he adapts to his fancy. As long 
as this book was printed only in Latin the Inquisition was 
silent ; but as soon as it was translated into Italian, they 
censured and prohibited it. On this opinion the ladies of 
Italy put a various construction. Some were sorry for 
having no souls, and for being ranked so much below 
men, who, for the future, would use them little better than 
beasts. Others seemed to be indifferent about the matter, 
and to look upon themselves as mere machines, de- 
signed to move their wheels so well as to make the men 
mad.* 

Of course the great bulk of the " Summa " concerns re- 
ligion and the soul. Theology is the very atmosphere which 
is necessary for the existence of the Angel of the Schools ; 
but every now and then the thoughts seem more modern, 
and he debates subjects in a way somewhat similar to our 
modern essayists, treating of matters which concern the 
heart and mind. Thus the rules Aquinas lays down for the 
cultivation of memory are very good. The first is that we 



* Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary. Article, Gediccus, 
p. 1394. 



36 VARTA. 

are to call up some images, simulacra, or likenesses of 
the things we wish to remember, which are not to be too 
familiar, because those which are rarer excite our ad- 
miration the more, and the mind therefore dwells on them 
more fixedly. This, the Angelic Doctor would have it, is the 
reason we remember the things of our boyhood so well, and 
hence he places the seat of memory in the sensitive part of 
our nature. The second act he tells us is to dispose of the 
things we wish to remember in order, so that one may 
easily suggest another. The third rule he gives us is to 
connect the things we wish to remember with our affec- 
tions, so that in very deed, as Mr. Maurice has it, we may 
learn by heart. The fourth is that we are frequently to 
think and meditate on them, so that they should become 
habits of our mind, and a part of its very nature. 

Aquinas's treatment of hatred is thoughtful and philoso- 
phical, and would afford more than a hint to more rapid, 
and sometimes rabid, penmen, who think too little and who 
write too much. He asks six questions about it : — 1st. 
Whether the cause and object of hatred be evil. 2nd. 
Whether hatred be caused by love. 3rd. Whether 
hatred be stronger than love. 4th. Whether anybody can 
truly hate himself. 5th. Whether anybody can possibly 
hate the truth. 6th. Whether anybody can have a uni- 
versal and general hatred of everything and everybody. 
He sums up that hatred can be caused by love, although 
he gives three reasons against it, and says, u Therefore 
love is not the cause of love ;" but immediately afterwards 
follow the stern words : — 



THE ANGELIC DOCTOR. 37 

" Sed contra est that which Augustin saith in the 14th 
book, l De Civitate Dei/ that all affections spring from 
love. Therefore even hatred, when it is a certain affection 
of the mind, is caused by love." A verdict we feel dis- 
posed to agree with, hatred being often perverted love ; 
and certainly the hatred which Dr. Johnson, who loved a 
good hater, entertained against John Wilkes, sprang from 
the very love and deep reverence which Johnson bore to 
those things which Wilkes ridiculed and tried to harm. 

Looked at through the dim vista of six centuries, the 
life and works of Thomas Aquinas are whole, sound, and 
beautiful. Such a dedication of a soul to God one sees but 
rarely ; so great a faith, so sweet a humility, perhaps even 
more rarely still. Beautiful are his unwavering faith and 
devotion and his manly ever-present courage. He had 
devoted his mind early to the Church, and he served her 
faithfully. Not without reason has his Church ranked 
him among her saints and holy men ; not unworthily does 
the Anglican Church bestow on him the title of learned. 
Sweet is it too, when ambition and gold, trade, place, title, 
and position, or even the tinkling of a literary name, have 
so large a share of the worship of the world, to turn to one 
who sat with kings as a simple monk, rapt in the questions 
of divinity or of the schools, unheeding the present pomp 
and ceremony, as well as the heavier and more substantial 
rewards of riches or of power. 

It would be idle to imagine that, in these days of rapid 
thinking and reading, many could be found who would sit 



38 VARIA. 

down to study the works which are here glanced at. But 
enough, perhaps, has been done to show that the scholar 
whose mind is engrossed in other pursuits may find much 
instruction and some amusement from an occasional 
perusal of a question or two as argued out by St. Thomas. 
Compared with other writers, his style may be considered 
pleasant; and, although the phraseology of the schools is of 
course frequently introduced, yet, bearing in mind the sub- 
jects treated, and the immense range of ideas which were 
foreign to classical antiquity, it is even easy and flowing. 
Lastly, reverting with Professor Maurice to the saying of 
Albertus Magnus, we may well say that Aquinas has abun- 
dantly fulfilled his master's prophecy concerning him. The 
bellowings of that bull have been heard in all countries and 
in all generations. There is more than a feeble echo of 
them in our own. He has governed the schools and 
moulded the thoughts of nearly all Eoman Catholic 
students, and has given a shape to the speculations of 
numbers who have never read any of his writings, and to 
whom his name is rather a terror than an attraction. 



NOSTRADAMUS. 



*zPz> 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

Le Propheties de Michel de Nostredame, dont il y en a trois cens qui 
n'ont jamais encores jamais est t imprimees. Troves, 1570(?). 

Gu'ir Pronosticon am den savant meurbed Michel Nostredamus evit 
nas bloas, §•<?. Monhoulez (Morlaix, 1831). 

Extrait de Propheties des Centuries de M. Nostradamus touchant 
Vttat present des affaires. Extract von Prophecyen, fyc. French 
and Dutch. Delft, 1688. 

Les Propheties de M. de Michel Nostredamus, dont il y en a trois 
cens qui n^ont jamais este* imprimees, ajoustees de nouveaupar le dit 
Autheur. (Predictions admirahles pour les ans courans en ce siecle, 
recueillies des memoires de feu Maistr. M. Nostradamus). Par V. 
Seve, Lyons, 1698. 

Le Propheties de M. M. Nostradamus, dont il y en a trois cens qui 
riont jamais este imprimees, ajoustees de nouveau, $•(?. fyc. Lyons, 
1698. 

The Wizard ; or, the Whole Art of Divining Dreams, by the help of 
which persons, fyc. on the principles of Nostradamus, 8fc. 1816. 

Le Bonheur Public, Prophetie de M. de M. §*c. Par Gorault de St. 
Fargeau. Paris, 1848. 

Cabinet Edition of the Encyclopcedia Metropolitan a. Occult Sciences. 
Griffin and Co. 1860. 

Miraculous Prophecies, Predictions, and Strange Visions of sundry 
Eminent Men. London, 1794. 

M. Nostredame (Les Propheties) ses Visions et Songes. Lyons, 
1555, A.D. 

Nostradamus, some of the Eminent Prophecies of (no place of publi- 
cation). 1679. 



NOSTRADAMUS. 



A.D. 1503—1566. 



T5*muXWti*£& 



HE sage who, with the lower and non- 
religious world — as distinguished from that 
which follows Dr. Cumming — deals chiefly 
in prophecy, and who now-a-days makes a 
large income from prophetic almanacs, is this year, 
perhaps, more lively than ever, and in his latest edition 
of "Zadkiel" boldly attacks the press for daring to assert 
that astrology was " exploded." " Who," he asks, " ex- 
ploded it?" and, receiving no answer to his question, he 
asserts that, because England does not believe in the voice 
of the stars, we see " among the poor want, misery, and 
indifference to Religion, Demons of Crime grovelling in 
vice — all the horrors of brutal ignorance, and the retro- 
grade march* of civilization ; among the rich, bloated 
wealth, sinful and soul-enslaving luxury, cruelty, oppres- 
sion, and harsh principles of law advocated 

And the kingdoms of Europe, reaping no fruit from 
experience, but ever ready to obey the evil influences of 
the martial star, and pour out each other's hearts' blood ! 



42 VARIA. 

These ! These are the dire evils reaped from the 
modern attempts to decry the science of astro- 
LOGY." The capitals are the writer's own. 

But Zadkiel has a set-off against unbelief. He can- 
not only refer to the Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy, to Plato, 
Pythagoras, Nigidius Figulus, and Manilius, Bacon, 
Melancthon, Nostradamus, Al Hakim the Wise, and John 
Kepler ("here be names, we hope"), but to the vast 
increase of believers of to-day. Cardinal Wiseman told us 
that, by the colportage system in France, from eight to nine 
millions of volumes were annually distributed ; but, finding 
u that exploded fallacies " of astrology were still preserved 
as scientific truths in these books, " the Government 
wisely required a stamp," and, of 7500 works examined, 
three-fourths were rejected. It is possible, of course, that 
the Cardinal's friends wished to keep out some of the 
explosive fallacies of Protestantism as well as " exploded 
fallacies " of astrology ; but Zadkiel chuckles over the free 
press in England, and, to show our superiority to France, 
gives the returns of the astrological almanacs in the fol- 
lowing list : — 

" Moore's Almanac sells about . . 600,000 



Partridge's about . 

Zadkiel's about 

Orion's, Old Moore's, and others 



290,000 
55,000 
50,000 



995,070 



Yearly total 

As each copy may be judged to be perused by six persons, 
this gives an aggregate number of readers not much below 



NOSTRADAMUS. 43 

six millions ! what other branch of literature can surpass 
this ?" (ZadhieVs Almanac for 1863). 

What, indeed ! Perhaps, after all — and this is the most 
melancholy part of the matter — these returns are not 
exaggerated by more than one-third, which, if so, leaves 
us four millions of astrological triflers, idlers, believers, or 
devotees, out of about ten millions of readers, if we may 
boast so many. If this be all that we have reached after 
many years of teaching, the ardent scholar may well ask 
with Milton, " What boots it with incessant care -strictly to 
meditate the thankless muse?" and may join with Zadkiel, 
from another point of view indeed, in lamenting the 
retrograde movement of civilization. 

Excepting, of course, Bacon and Kepler, many of the 
old disciples of astrology were mere puppets. Nostrada- 
mus has a sounding name, and he has certainly published 
twelve " centuries" (hundreds) of quatrains of prophecy; 
but, after reading most of these carefully, we may fairly 
say that, out of the fifty thousand lines, more than half are 
so utterly mystical that they cannot be understood, and 
that, of the remainder, only about one-tenth can be applied. 
His art is much the same as that practised at the present 
day. A direct application he seldom gives ; but it is fair 
to say — little as it may be — that an ardent believer in his 
prophetic spirit could twist, perhaps, twenty of his verses 
into some comprehensible application. It is very possible 
that no one else would agree to that application ; indeed, 
we always, with all prophets, want a key to the prophecy 
after it has occurred, and our modern soothsayers take 



44 VAEIA. 

care to supply us with one under the heading of " prophe- 
cies fulfilled." 

Michel Nostradamus, a man probably of Jewish descent,* 
but said to have been of noble family, " now only remem- 
bered/' writes a biographer, u as the author of the most 
celebrated predictions published in modern times," was in 
his own day a skilful physician. He was born on the 
14th December, 1503. His father was a notary public, 
and his grandfather a physician. Michel, having studied 
at Montpellier, was driven away by the plague there in 
1522 ; he then travelled, and, returning to Montpellier, 
took his degree. At Agen he became intimate with Julius 
Csesar Scaliger, whom he styles a Virgil in poetry, a 
Cicero in eloquence, and a Galen in medicine. His 
attachment to Scaliger induced him to make some stay in 
the town ; and he there married, but lost, at the end of four 
years, his wife and the children he had by her. Agen 
became insupportable to him, and, after having travelled for 
twelve years in Guienne, Languedoc, and Italy, he returned 
to Provence, and settled at Salon, where he married a lady 
of a very ancient family. He was invited, by a deputation 
of the inhabitants of Aix, to visit that town, in conse- 
quence of the plague occurring there, and was of such 
service, by the invention of a powder, that he received for 

* "II s'en glorifiait, et l'avait la pretention d'etre issu de la 
tribu d'Issachar ; il se faisait l'application de ces paroles de Para- 
lipomenes," (I. 12, vers. 32), De film quoque Issachar, viri eruditi, 
qui noverunt singula tempora, Biographie Universelle, NOSTREDAME, 
par M. W — s. 



NOSTRADAMUS. 45 

several years a pension in return. In 1547 he succeeded 
equally well in Lyons ; and, on returning to Salon, where 
he had settled, he employed himself, not only in com- 
pounding medicines, but also in studying astrology and the 
arts of divination and prophecy. The predictions he 
wrote at first in prose, but afterwards, thinking better of 
the matter, he turned them into verse, and in 1555 pub- 
lished his first three centuries, with a bombastic dedication 
to his son Csesar, then an infant. 

Nostradamus did not forget to speak of himself and his 
wonderful gift in this dedication, and, in a superstitious 
age, easily set the ball of his own fame rolling. Notwith- 
standing the proverb that a prophet is but poorly received 
in his own country, the fame of the arch-seer grew to a 
very respectable height ; and, although many called him an 
impostor, others declared that " his inspiration came from 
God," about which he himself appears to have had the 
least doubt of any. 

Catherine de Medicis, " the godless regent," who 
" trembled at a star," hearing of him, persuaded her son, 
Henry II, to send for him to Paris, where he was received 
graciously, and sent back to his own country " loaded 
with presents ; " that is, the king gave him two hundred 
crowns, and despatched him to Blois to foretell the des- 
tinies of the two royal children there. Encouraged by 
his success, he increased his quatrains to twelve centuries. 
Shortly afterwards, the king being slain at a tourna- 
ment, all the French world consulted the prophet's book 
of quatrains to find whether he had foretold the circum- 



46 VARTA. 

stances. In the thirty-fifth, quatrain of the fifth century 
were found the following lines : — 

" Le lion jeune le vieu surmontera; 

En champ bellique par singulier duel, 
Dans cage d'or les yeux lui crevera 

Deux plaies une, pius mourir ; mort cruelle !" 

We pres # ume that the golden cage in which the lion was 
to finish his existence referred to the gilded armour of the 
king, or the golden bars of the kingly helmet, which her- 
alds always represent front-faced and somewhat more open 
than that of a nobleman, certainly less protected than that 
of a simple esquire. Perhaps in modern days we may 
see the difficulty of fully adapting the prophecy ; but with 
the French of that day it was otherwise, and the prophet 
thereon became very much in request. Emmanuel, Duke 
of Savoy, and his wife, Margaret of France, honoured him 
with a visit ; Charles IX, on his progress through France, 
sent for him, and, it is said — the story is told of other 
astrologers — determined to put him to death, and asked 
him in bitter jesting if he could foretell the hour of his 
own death. " Sire," said the cunning physician, " the 
fates have withheld from me the exact hour of my death ; 
but, on consulting the stars, I found out thus much, that I 
shall die some very short time before your Majesty : our 
fates are inseparably connected. You will not long survive 
me." It need hardly be added that the superstitious king 
did not carry out his intention of slaying the astrologer, 
lie was, indeed, appointed his physician in ordinary, and 
Henry presented him with a purse of two hundred crowns. 
His popularity having in the meantime been on the wane 



NOSTRADAMUS. 47 

in Salon, he begged that he might he treated with more 
respect; hereupon the king stated publicly that " all ene- 
mies of the physician should be reckoned as his own." 

Nostradamus lived about sixteen months after this, 
dying on the 2nd of July, 1566. He was variously esti- 
mated as a rogue, a charlatan, a fool, an enthusiast, and a 
prophet. Even so lately as 1806 a M. Bouys published a 
defence of him, in which he claims for him the merit of 
having foretold the death of our Charles I, that of the Due 
de Montmorency, son of Louis XIII, the persecution of 
the Christian Church in 1792, the elevation of Napoleon 
to the Empire, the duration of his reign, the fact (?) of his 
being equally powerful at sea and on land, and the con- 
quest of the Corsican hero by the English. 

" The people of Salon," says M. Bouche,* " yet be- 
lieve that Nostradamus shut himself up alive in his tomb, 
with a lamp, paper, ink, pens, and books, and that he 
threatens with death any one who shall have the boldness 
to open it. This superstitious belief cannot but be very 
useful to the speculators who put forth new editions of the 
centuries of Nostradamus, with new quatrains adapted to 
recent events." 

" No one," says a believer in the subject of this paper, 
" should say that he has been at Salon without having 
visited the tomb of the great wizard. His monument may 
be seen at this day (1816). It is on the right hand of 
the traveller as he enters the door of the cloister, against 
the wall. It is nothing more than a projection of marble 
of about a foot square, and about the height of a man ; 

* " Essai sur l'Histoire de Proveuce," p. 69. 



48 VARIA. 

the lower part is in the form of a slope, or shelve. Upon 
this tomb is the cast of the wise man ; it represents him 
as he was at the age of sixty-two, when he died; his 
coat of arms, together with that of his wife, is in a square 
of black cloth ; between this cast and that of his lady is 
his epitaph, in Latin." 

Of this latter here follows a translation. One will not fail 
to notice the similarity of the wish expressed on the tomb 
of Shakspere and on that of Nostradamus. With him, as 
with Michael Scott, is buried his great book of spells ; and 
the verses of Scott, in the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
might be aptly quoted, should any one, like William of 
Deloraine, dare to profane his tomb : — 

" It was iron clasped and iron bound, 
And he thought as he took it the dead man frown'd." 

HERE REST THE BONES 

OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS 

MICHAEL NOSTRADAMUS, 

The only one worthy in the judgment of all Mankind to write, 
with bis almost inspired pen, and according to 

THE DIRECTION OF THE STARS, 

The Events which should happen upon Earth. 

He lived to the age of 62 years, 6 months, and 6 days, 

And died at Salon, anno 1566. 



Beware you disturb not his repose ! 

Anne Touciie Gemelle, his wife, wishes eternal felicity 
to her Husband.* 



* D. M.— Clarissimi ossa Michaelis Nostradami unicus omnium 



NOSTRADAMUS. 49 

This Anne Touche Gemelle is said to have helped her 
husband on the way to eternal felicity by having poisoned 
him. Let us hope that this story is, as is most probable, 
untrue. 

Of course those curious about the matter of this paper 
will only consult the old editions of Lyons or Troyes, 
1568, a small 8vo, and that of Amsterdam, a 12mo, 1668. 
There is an edition of his prophecies of which political 
capital was largely made against Cardinal Mazarin. This 
is its title and date, " Les Yraies Centuries- de Michel 
Nostradamus expliquees sur les affaires de ce temps, 
1652." The prophet of Salon had, like most men who have 
attained any celebrity, his opponents as well as supporters. 
Ant. Coullard wrote bitterly against him, and Conrad Badius 
published in 1562 a satire in verse against him, entitled 
" Les Yertus de notre Maitre Nostradamus." But if one 
or two attacked him, hundreds have defended him. One 
man wrote a commentary on his quatrains, another pub- 
lished a concordance to them,* and so late as 1806 Theo- 
dore Bouys published with reference to him " New Consi- 
derations based upon the instinctive Clairvoyance of Man, 
on Oracles, Sybilles, Prophecies, and particularly on Nos- 
tradamus." 

Here is the prediction about our Charles I, which is at 

judicio digni cujus pene divino calamo totius orbis ex Astrorura in- 
fluxu futuri eventus conscriberetur, &c. The name of his wife is 
given as Anna Pontia Gemella, a native of Salon . 

* "Concordance des Propheties de 1ST , avec histoire." Guy- 

naud, 1693. 

E 



50 VABIA. 

least singular from having been written and printed in the 

year 1598 : — 

" Gand et Bruxelles marcheront contre Anvers ; 
Senat de Londres mettront a mort leur Roi ; 
Le sel et le vin lui seront a Penvers, 
Pour eux avoir regn6 en desarroi." 

The one which follows, however, is yet more so. In 
dedicating his work to Henry II, Nostradamus told that 
sovereign that the Church of Eome would suffer much 
persecution, " et durera ceste cy jusques a Tan mille sept- 
cent nonante deux, que l'on cuidera estre une renovation 
de siecle." To appreciate the force of this prediction it 
is necessary to remember that in 1792 (Sept. 22) the 
French Eepublic decreed the abolition of the old method 
of measuring time from the birth of Christ, and that all 
public acts were to be reckoned from the new era — in 
fact, from the year One. 

Eut, in spite of these lucky guesses, the major part of 
the quatrains of Nostradamus are to us as incomprehen- 
sible as " Hebrew- Greek " was to Sir John Fa] staff. 
What, for instance, can we understand by this, which 
relates to our own land ? 

" Le Grand Empire fera par Angleterre a 
Le Pempotam des ans plus au trois cents ; 
Grands copies passee par mer et terre, 
Les Lusitans n'en feront pas contens." 

Does it relate to the dissatisfaction which Portugal felt, 
and perhaps now feels, at the success of England's 
colonies? Again, to what Grecian princess does this 
allude ?— 



NOSTRADAMUS. 51 

" La dame Grecque de beaute aydigue, 
Heureuse faits de ports innumerable, 
Hors translate en regne Hispanique, 
Captive prinse, mourir mort miserable." 

This is the seventy- eighth quatrain of the ninth century. 
In the following one, printed, as all the other extracts 
from the book, verbatim et literatim, many have pretended 
to see a prophecy of the death of Louis XVI : — 

" Pluye, Faim, Guerre en Perse non cessee, 
La foy trop grand trahiri le monarque ; ' 
Par finie en Gaule commencee, 
Secret auguste pour a un estre parque." 

" The Rain, Famine, War in Persia not being ended, 
Too great credulity shall betray the monarch ; 
Being ended there, it shall begin in France, 
A secret omen to one that he shall die." 

The English translator in 1794 adds, " No sooner had 
a peace been settled between Lord Cornwallis and Tippoo 
Saib, than war was declared against France, which proves 
a striking instance of the truth of this prediction." Louis 
XVI. was put to death in 1793. The next that we have 
to present to the reader forms one, we presume, amongst 
the many which may have had a partial fulfilment ; or, on 
the other hand, mayhap it has yet to come to pass ; for it 
is a striking beauty in Nostradamus, as well as in other 
prophets, that their predictions are so widely made that, if 
not applicable to one person or age, they are open to fit 
another. To take an instance, the modern, so-called 
" Zadkiel " having, as it happens, last year prophesied the 



52 VABIA. 

death of Lord Russell, and several others whose great 
age would naturally scarcely require a prophet to foretell 
a proximate decease, to-day eats his own words, and 
declares that the application was wrongly made, and 
that, if the Prime Minister do not die this year, he will 
" come to much honour in October or November next." 
" Truly, there is much virtue in an ' if.' " This is the 
quatrain to which we allude : — 

" Regne Gaulois tu seras change, 
En lieu estrange est translate l'Empire, 
En autre moeurs et lois feras range, 
Rouan et Chartres te feront bien du pire." 

Of course Nostradamus has been put to other political 
use than that of fulminating against Cardinal Mazarin. 
In 1848, when all the French papers were flattering 
the French Republic and the French people, a cer- 
tain M. Girault de Saint-Fargeau published a folio 
broadside called "Le Bonheur Public," a prophecy of 
Michel Nostradamus. This " public good " is a curious 
paper, and the prophecy translated and given to it by 
M. Saint-Fargeau, who has also Frenchified the style so 
as to render it more readily understandable (" dont on a 
francise le style pour le rendre plus facile a comprendre "), 
is certainly the largest ever made by Michel. The clumsi- 
ness in which the style is Frenchified is apparent to all. The 
writer goes into statistics, and gives us a crowd of figures, 
budgets of expenses, Justice, Worship, Public Instruction, 
and Foreign Affairs. In it three great French Eevolutions 
are predicted— 1793, 1848, and 1998. There was to be 



NOSTRADAMUS. 53 

the abolition of the punishment of death, and a general dis- 
armament in 1860 by the decision of a congress of all the 
States of Europe. Twenty-five thousand colonists were to 
be yearly gratuitously deported from France, and in return 
these grateful colonists would send trees, grain, vegetables, 
and animals susceptible of being naturalized in France, and 
fit also for increasing the means of nourishment for those at 
home, and to enlarge the comfortable existence (bien-etre) 
of the indigenous population. 

After having discoursed considerably about -matters con- 
nected rather with industrial exhibitions and public work- 
shops than with anything else, this gentleman who "frenchi- 
fies" old Nostradamus exhausts his broadside, and then tells 
us that the manuscript— which, by the way, was taken in 
1847 from the tomb of Nostradamus, at Salon, in the arron- 
dissement of Aix, department of Bouches-du-Ehone — be- 
gins to get imperfect, and offers more than one gap to the 
reader, since the last page has been spoilt by the damp. 
" It is with great trouble," says the romancist, " that we 
can decipher the following : — 

" c . . . Europe ... La France the capital 
. . . . civilized world .... natural limits 
the Ehine, the Alps and the Pyrenees . . . ' n 

Most readers will remark here, that, as the proverbial 
nod is as good as a wink, the damp has done not so much 
harm. We are told that we can manage to fill up these 
lacunas. The prophecies, indeed, are rather improved than 
" deteriores par l'humidite." At least so says M. G. de 
Saint-Fargeau. Let us go on : — 



54 VABIA. 

'"-. . . Germany . . . vast democratic con- 
federation . e . Bavaria, Saxony, Austria, Hungary, 
. . . another confederation . . . the Netherlands, 
Hanover, Prussia and Denmark . . .' " 

This seems rather droll and a little out of the right 
line just now ; but we do not know what we have yet to 
come to — 

" < To Sweden will be united Finland and the district 
of Saint Petersburg, of which the town of that name 
will become the capital ... The Eussians . . . 
pushed back beyond . , . Dnieper . . . Poland 
. . . extends to the Black Sea on the south . . . 
to the Baltic between the Vistula and Dwina on the 
north.' " 

Eeally the damp has been very obliging to the prophet. 

" ' Crimea, Circassia and Georgia . . . from . . . 
descendants of Schamyl . . . Turks . . . swept 
back into Asia .... Greece, Candia, Bulgaria, 
Albania, Boumelia .... Moldavia and Wallachia 
. . of which Constantinople is the capital . . . 
Italy a federation . . . Sicily, Naples, States of the 
Church, Lombardy, Piedmont.' " 

Nostradamus, in truth, in 1847, knew something. If 
he only comes as near the truth with us as he has done 
with others, farewell England ! 

" ' L'Angleterre . . . whose colonies have been 
long made free . . . will renounce her Indian posses- 
sions . . „ reduced to the part which her insular 
position assigns to her . . . in consequence of the 



NOSTRADAMUS. 55 

immense development of the commercial navies of the 
two Americas . . . ' " 

Equally as genuine as the above extracts, so far as 
having been written by Nostradamus, are the following 
lines on the signification of dreams, extracted from the 
mighty book of Nostradamus which, we were told, in 
1816,* was iron-clasped and iron-bound, and therefore 
had not suffered from damp. 

Absence. To dream of any absent friend 

Will news of them or ill portend; 
And if at thy bed-side they seem, 
Their death, perhaps, may solve thy dream. 

The above is dogmatic ; those which follow are according 
to the fashion of interpreters of dreams from Joseph down- 
wards — merely symbolic, or simply per contra. 

Anchor. See an anchor in yr dream 

And certain hope and comfort beam. 

Bees. Bees in your dream good friends imply, 
Who'll serve you most industriously ; 
But, if bees sting, it plainly shows 
That thou hast busy active foes. 

Belly. To dream one's belly 's large and great 
Predicts a fair and large estate. 

Does it ? In the name of Sir John Falstaff, that ton of 
man, why so ? should it not rather predict dropsy ? 

Bulls, To dream of bulls is dread and drear: 
Some enemies be sure are near. 

* The Wizard, p. 15. See list of books consulted. 



56 



VARIA. 



Cradle. A cradle means, to maid or wife, 
A joyful but a busy life. 

Coach. Dream that you in a carriage ride 
And poverty shall lower pride. 

Death. To dream of death a marriage means ; 
So variegated are life's scenes. 

Hand. To dream a cold hand is put to you in bed, 
Your next news will be a relation is dead. 

Onions. To dream of eating onions means 
Much strife in thy domestic scenes. 

Paper. To dream that you on paper write 
Denotes accusers, hate and spite. 

Silver. To dream of silver means deceit : 

The slippery coin's an emblem meet. 

Virgin. A virgin discoursing is good in a dream, 
Joy and delight on your house shall beam. 

Wound* To dream of a wound is sorrow and grief: 
Of dressing a wound is cure or relief. 

Writing. Dreaming of writing ever means news 

'Twill grant or deny, will give or refuse. 



After this, who will deny the wisdom of our ancestors ? 
As I am unable to find the original of the above " choice " 
productions, it would be absurd to give Nostradamus the 
Credit of them. 

Nostradamus was, of course, a weather prophet, and 
published during several years an almanac and many 
other works, most of them medical, of which the names 
only are remembered. A famous Latin distich, attributed 
to Beza, and also to Jodelle, contains as much good sense 



NOSTRADAMUS. 57 

as it does point, and is worthy to be remembered in 
connection with this prophet. 

" Nostra damus, cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostra est ; 
Et cum falsa damus, nil nisi nostra damus." 

A townsman of Michel has published an abridgment of 
his life, and Adelung has placed him amongst his portraits 
in the " Histoire de la Folie Humaine," a work which, if 
it were fully done, would be of the driest and most melan- 
choly reading, but surely, also, a story without, an end. 
It is questionable whether there be any believers in the 
prophet now alive ; still, many astrologers and alchemists 
buy their books of Mr. Millard, in Newgate-street ; and, 
as we have yet amongst us those who believe in Joanna 
Southcote and her Shiloh, there may also be those who 
puzzle their bemused brains over the Centuries of Michel 
Nostradamus. 




THOMAS A KEMPIS AND THE 



IMITATIO CHRISTI. 



*$&> 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

De Imitatione Christi et Contemptu Mundi omniumque ejus vanitatum. 
Codex de Advocatis Sceculi xiii. Londini, apud Guil. Pickering, 
1851. 

Imitation de Jesus- Christ. Traduction Nouvelle. Sur V Edition 
Latine de 1764. Revue sur huit Manuscripts. Par M. L'Abbe 
Valart. MDCCLXVI. 

The Christian's Pattern ; or, A Treatise of the Imitation of Christ 
In four books. By George Stanhope, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary 
to His Majesty. Ninth edition. 1714. 

De V Imitation de Notre- Seigneur Jesus- Christ. Par Jean Gerson, 
Chancelier de l'Universite' de Paris. Traduite en Francais, en 
Grec, en Anglais, en Allemand, en Italien, en Espagnol, et en 
Portugais ; (texte Latin en regarde). Publi6e sous la direction 
de J. B. Monfalcon. Lyon, 1841. 

Imitation of Christ. A new translation. Burns, London, 1856. 

Imitation of Christ. New edition. 12mo. J. H. & J. Parker, 
London, 1861. 

Sunday at Home. Part for November, 1865. 




THOMAS A KEMPIS AND THE 
IMITATIO CHRISTI. 

I HEN one is perfectly aware that, of all popular 
books, popular in the best sense, and widely 
spread in the fullest, the Imitatio Christi 
stands first ; when we call to mind that Dr. 
Johnson said of it that it had gone through more editions 
than there had been months since its publication — it 
may seem anomalous to place it amongst the rare books. 
But there are circumstances which render its position 
here perfectly legitimate. The history of the book is 
curious, and almost every one who reads it becomes either 
a Kempisian or an anti-Kempisian, or, in a special sense, a 
Thomist, or an anti-Thomist. Last year an edition* was 
published in which the present writer gave a full account 
of the three claimants to the authorship of the celebrated 
book, Jean Gerson, Jean Grersen, and Thomas the Monk 
of A Kempis, whom scholars now generally presume to 
have been a mere copyist. Yet, writing some months after 



* " Like unto Christ." De Jmitatione Christi. Usually ascribed 
to Thomas-a-Kempis. Low, Son, & Marston. 1865. 



62 VARIA. 

this publication, Andrew Thomson, D.D., states, in an 
article in the " Sunday Magazine/' that the weight of 
evidence is in favour of A Kempis, and, stranger still, that 
" Gerson " is merely an alteration of " Gerson l" Here are 
his words : — 

(i The earliest edition of this religious treatise carries us 
back through nearly four centuries, or a hundred years 
beyond the Eeformation. In the intervening ages, it is 
affirmed to have been translated into sixty different lan- 
guages, and to have passed through 1800 editions, and 
probably to have been more read than any other religious 
book, the Bible alone excepted. And that it has in no 
degree been indebted to external circumstances connected 
with its composition for the hold which it retains of human 
interest, may be concluded from the fact, that its author- 
ship was, for many ages, the subject of as much discussion 
as that of the celebrated letters of Junius, and that the 
controversial works which have been expended on this one 
subject have occupied a hundred times more space than the 
original work itself. It became a national question be- 
tween the learned schools of different countries ; and uni- 
versities ranged themselves on the side of opposite claimants. 
The theologians and literary men of France generally con- 
tended that Thomas-a-Kempis was merely the transcriber 
of the book, and that John Gerson, a famous chancellor of 
the University of Paris, was its real author. Others put 
forward the name of John Gersen, whose name has been 
found attached to one manuscript ; but one is strongly 
tempted to suspect that this is only a slight misnomer for 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. 63 

the Chancellor. The German and Flemish writers who 
entered the lists in this long-pending discussion, declared 
themselves on the side of A-Kempis, and were ultimately 
supported by the powerful authority of the Sorbonne. The 
external evidence on the side of the two principal claimants 
seems nearly equal ; but not to speak of a very distinct line 
of unbroken tradition, the internal evidence turns the scale 
in favour of A-Kempis ; for Gerson was never the inmate 
of a monastery, which Thomas-a-Kempis was for seventy 
years, and the whole composition bears the indubitable 
mark of monastic life, and evidently comes from the pen of 
a solitary, though kind-hearted ascetic." 

The " distinct hue of unbroken tradition," alas ! is so faint 
that the good doctor would find it hard to trace. Kempis 
was a " copying" monk ; many works are known to have — to 
use a penny-a-liner's phrase — " proceeded from his pen," 
amongst others, several testaments, old and new ; but no 
one ever accused him of writing those books. M. Gence 
has described the manuscript of 1425, on which all 
A Kempis's claims rest, and all that is therein is this : 
that there is on the MS. a note in a strange hand, in 
Latin, in which note we are told that it is " to be under- 
stood that this tractate was written by the upright and ex- 
cellent man, Thomas, of Mount St. Agnes, called Thomas 
de Kempis ; it was written by the hand of the author in 
1425." But this anonymous note, as the editor of the 
French Polyglot says, proves nothing.* Nothing, certainly, 

* Presente-t-il du moins l'evidence positive de la date de sa 



64 VARIA. 

in favour of A Kempis ; but it internally proves this, that 
the note was not written by A Kempis if he were the 
author. Surely the writer of " Like unto Christ" would 
never call himself probus et egregius vir. As for the links 
of unbroken tradition, we do not really know where they 
are. Thomas Dibdin, M.A., a good bibliopolist and a 
scholar, thought that descrvptus ex manu might be read as 
" copied out by/' and tells us that which the translator of 
the latest edition does, that only solitary books ever bore 
A Kempis's name. The edition which attributed the book 
to A Kempis is called by M. Monfalcon the editio p>rin~ 
ceps (he doubts with Dibdin and Gence the edition of 
1468), and was printed in 1472. But in 1474 we have a 
certain edition assigning the book to John Gerson ! And 
there is an edition without date, which M. de Gregory 
places to the year 1470, on the testimony of an old 
catalogue which bears this title, &c, " De Imitatione 
Christi. . . Incipit liber Magistri Johannis Gerson 
de Imitatione Christi." Nay, in 1481 there is an edition 
which attributes the work to St. Bernard. " Incipit opus 

composition en 1425? Non sans doute. Cette date est-elle inscrite 
sur le manuscrit lui-meme, et de la main qui a transcrit le texte ? 
Point de tout : elle se trouve dans une note anonyme et bien eVidem- 
ment ecrite par une main etrangere. La voici : — Ci Notandum quod 
iste tractatus editus est a probo et egregio viro magistro Thoma de 
Monte Sanctce Agnetis et canonico regulari in Trajecto Thomas de Kem- 
pis dictus, descriptus ex manu auctoris in Trajecto, anno 1425, in 
societatu provincial atus." Cette note anon3 r me, et d'un main 
etrangere, ne saurait done avoir l'autorite du manuscrit lui-meme.' , 
J. B. MONFALCON, De VAuteur de V Imitation. 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. 65 

Beati Bernardi Saluberrimu de Imitatione Xpi et contemptu 
mundi quod Johanni Gerson . . . attribuitur." For 
many editions after this the name of A Kempis totally 
disappears. So much for the chain of evidence. 

But Dr. Thomson has told his readers that he fancies 
" Gersen" was a mere misprint for " Gerson" ! Can it be so? 
In the year 1638, years after Thomas of Saint Agnes 
and Jean Gerson had shared the honours of writing this 
excellent tractate, a little edition in 12mo. was published, 
carefully collated with ten MSS, in which the book was 
boldly placed to the score of John Gersen, Abbot of Ver- 
ceil. Here is the title : — 

" De Imitatione Christi libri iv. per Franciscum Val- 
gravium Angl. benedict. ... J. Gerseni Abbati Ver- 
cellensi, italo benedictino ex dena manuscriptorum fide 
vindicato, Lutetiae, 1638." 

Here the English Benedictine vindicates the existence 
of the Italian Benedictine, whom Andrew Thomson, D.D., 
has so kindly endeavoured to annihilate, or rather to iden- 
tify with the Parisian Chancellor. The fact is that Jean 
Gersen of Canabaca, or Cabaliaca,* was Abbot of a Con- 
vent of Benedictines in the thirteenth century, from the 
year 1220 to 1230 ; and he seems, says M. Monfalcon — 
who, perhaps very naturally after all, sums up in favour 
of his own countryman, and against the Piedmontese 
monk — " to have much more legitimate right to be con- 
sidered the author of the Imitation than A Kempis him- 

* Now Cavaglia, in the Vercellais (Piedmont). 
F 



66 VARIA. 

self. For, unless we adduce barbarous Latin (and Italian- 
ized words can be set off against Germanized words), 
the " Imitatio " presents no internal proof of a German 
monk having written the book, whereas Gersen has one 
special proof which argues in his favour, and equally 
against A Kempis and Gerson." This was pointed out by 
Father Ganganelli, who died as Pope Clement XIV.* 

" What has made/' wrote Ganganelli to his friend, a 
Canon of Orsino, " the Imitation of Jesus Christ so 
valuable and affecting is, that the author (Gersen, Abbe 
of Verceil, in Italy) has transfused into it all that holy 
charity with which he himself was divinely animated. 

" Gerson is commonly confounded with Gersen ; never- 
theless it is easy to prove that neither Gerson nor Thomas 
a Kempis were the authors of that matchless book ; and 
this, I own, gives me infinite pleasure, because I am de- 
lighted with the thought of such an excellent work being 
(having been) written by an Italian. There is evident 
proof in the fifth chapter of the fourth book that it was 
not a Frenchman who wrote the Imitation. It is there 
expressed that the priest, clothed in his sacerdotal habit, 
carries the cross of Jesus Christ before him ; f now all 
the world knows that the chasubles (a kind of cope which 

* I am quite aware that many look upon these very letters of 
Ganganelli as forgeries ; but this does not invalidate the testimony 
of the citation, its evidence being internal. 

t " Sacerdos sacris vestibus indutus . . Ante se crucem in casula 
portat, ut Christi vestigia diligenter inspiciat, et sequi frequenter 
studeat." De Imit. Christi, lib. iv. cap. 5, sec. 3. Codex deAdvo- 
catis, sseculi xiii. 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. 67 

priests wear at mass) in France differ from those in Italy, 
in this, that they wear their cross upon their backs ; but 
I will not write a dissertation, being content to assure 
you that I am, (fee."* 

This letter is dated Eome, 6th February, 1749, and 
may be at least cited as a proof that such an individual as 
Gersen did exist. The similarity of the names is simply 
curious, nor is the patronymic so uncommon as to make it 
more than that. The book-learned editor of Nutt's Cata- 
logue of Foreign Theological Literature quotes -almost the 
whole sentence given above, but with the clauses in different 
order, and he boldly puts down the dictum to " Clement 
XIV." f But, after all, the next paragraph is almost 
equally in favour of Gerson the Chancellor. " He is 
marked with the cross behind." Post se cruce signatus est. J 
There is, however, a wide difference between the phrases 
" ante se portat" and " signatus est." Does Ganganelli's 
citation allude to the vestments at all ? 

The dispute, which probably will never be settled, is a 
very interesting one ; but, having nothing further to say, I 
may be pardoned for passing on to the title of the book. 
The English translation is very awkward-looking and un- 

* Letters of Pope Clement XIV (Ganganelli), translated from 
the French edition of Sottin le Jeune. Fifth Edition. London, 
Baldwin and Co. mdcclxxxi. 

t Catalogue of Theological Works. David Nutt, Strand, 1837. 
No. 3224 in list, Kempis (Thorn, a). 

J " Ruckwarts ist er mit einem Kreuze bezeichnei. 'Ottlguj nvrcp 
rip GTavpoj i(j<ppayi(j9r}" Renderings from the Polyglot edition 
of " Like unto Christ." Lyons, 1841. 



68 VAEIA. 

English. Of course the Latin word, which is admirable, 
has been a stumbling-block to all translators. The first, 
Mayster William, who puts forth his version, printed in 
London by Wynkyn de Worde and Eichard Pin son, called 
it " The Imitation, or Following of Christ" Edward Hake,* 
of Gray's Inn, copied the title, and says that the original 
was first written by Thomas Kempise, a Dutchman, 
amended and polished by Sebastien Castalio, an Italian, 
and Englished by Edward H. Mr. Thomas Eogers in 
1584, William Page in 1639, cited by Dr. Watt in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica as the translator, and Luke 
Milbourne, who, in 1697, turned the book into quaint and 
sometimes good rough verse, followed Mayster William 
in his long and periphrastic name. Dean Stanhope, who 
has his faults as a translator, since " il a mutile le texte ; 
tantot il l'abrege, tantot il l'etend outre mesure, et toujours il 
en denature la couleur," — yet had sense enough to break 
away from the un-English Imitation, and called his ver- 
sion the " Christian's Pattern." And finally, in spite of the 
dictum of one of my reviewers, that my own version of the 
title is " impertinent," I have ventured to call it, in plain 
English, " Like unto Christ." 

In an age like the present, when we care more for the 
comfortable surroundings of life than for anything else, to 
study this book, which has mainly been written with re- 
ference to the former, is a bold experiment ; but, because 
it is bold, it will be interesting. It will be like walking 

* The Imitation, or Following of Christ. London, 1567, in 8vo. 



THOMAS A.KEMPIS. 69 

in a cool room and a purer atmosphere after being heated 
with the scents, music, fine dresses, exercise, and the other 
warm accessories of the hall-room. To read in a gold- 
seeking and self-seeking age of a man who looked upon 
wealth as a curse, who considered place a trial, and who 
thought the very friendship and society of women dan- 
gerous in the extreme — to read of such a one in an age 
which runs after the heels of the prettiest and most 
showy girl, which elevates her to a goddess and uses her 
as a toy, will at least he something novel ; for' what must 
many of our ladies be when M. Dupin, at Paris, feels con- 
strained to publish a pamphlet " Sur le Luxe effrene cles 
Dames" — on the unbridled luxury (of dress) of women ? — 
when at Marseilles men band together not to marry till 
women grow less expensive ? — when virtue is laughed at 
if poor, and success, even of the most shameful kind, is 
honoured, or at least tolerated ? " You see that man : 
that's old Johnson of our square. "Well, he managed the 
estates of three young clients, and somehow they grew 
poor, and he grew rich : d'ye see ? He's worth knowing, 
he is." Or your friend points out Simkins. " You know 
Simkins. What ! don't know Simkins ? He made a lot 
of money in the Crimean war by selling putrid meat and 
bad hay ; not a bad dodge, eh ?" Such conversations as 
these are to be heard every day. In New York successful 
men are pointed out who have made money in like manner, 
" by fair dealing, if possible, but money by any means ;" 
and these are the new Democracy, abused by the Press, 
but envied by their fellow-citizens. In Paris a new 



70 VARIA. 

aristocracy has sprung up, which depends upon speculation 
for its sudden fortunes, but which has in great measure 
supplanted the old titular and territorial nobility. It is an 
age of luxury and material wealth ; and nothing succeeds 
like success. 

The very name of asceticism has almost been forgot- 
ten. Our Quakers and Methodist religionists are losing 
their hold upon the world. Arts and manufactures have 
become luxurious, pleasing, and delightful. The new 
philosophy teaches us to enjoy the world ; to make the 
most of life, not to despise it ; to use the world, not to 
contemn it. Hence asceticism has grown out of fashion ; 
for the very spirit of asceticism demands us to control our 
passions, to throw away our luxury, to despise riches, 
place, and honours, and to exercise ourselves in hardness, 
want, endurance, and a noble poverty. 

Of all treatises on this religious art, dogma, or inten- 
tion, the work which passes under the name of " Thomas a 
Kempis" is surely the best and most fascinating. It is one 
which Dr. Johnson said " the world had opened its arms 
to receive." It is as popular as "Robinson Crusoe" or the 
a Pilg r i m ? s Progress." It has been translated into all 
tongues, and many times over into French and English. 
It is called the "Imitation of Christ," the original title 
being " De Imitatione Christi ;" but, in a recent transla- 
tion, as has already been mentioned, in which there is a 
history of the work, and parallel Scripture passages proving 
the perfect Evangelical feeling therein, it is called " Like 
unto Christ," because its purport is to teach the readei te 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. 71 

aim at being as nearly as possible truly like our Lord in 
life and deed. From the date of the first appearance of 
the "Imitatio" until now there have been, in all languages, 
perhaps three thousand editions ; and yet no one knows 
with certainty who was the author. In fact, the latest 
English editor presumes that the book had many authors ; 
that it is so good, that the spirit of many men, each 
chastened by sorrow and purified by faith, added word 
after word, and passage after passage to " the priceless 
sentences of Thomas a Kempis," as the Rev. Charles 
Kingsley has called them. 

Everybody has praised the book. It is one which 
Roman Catholics claim, for its author was an Augustine 
monk, or a chancellor of a monastery — certainly a priest ; 
although it is as -free from exclusiveness as the Bible itself. 
It was a favourite with Jean Jacques Rousseau, who wept 
over its pages ; and yet he was a man who detested 
Romanism — nay, Christianity itself. A version of it was 
edited by John Wesley, and read by Whitefield, who 
abominated stage-players ; another version was put into 
verse by Racine, the celebrated French dramatic poet; 
and a copy was carried about by Corneille, the great 
comic dramatist. Fontenelle, who wrote the " Plurality of 
Worlds," and who was suspected of Materialism, said that 
it was " the most excellent book that ever proceeded out 
of the hands of man, the Gospel being of Divine original." 
Johnson loved the book. Vaughan, author of " Hours 
with the Mystics," says that it can be " appreciated with- 
out taste, and understood without learning," and that 



72 VABIA. 

thousands upon thousands in castle and cloister have for- 
gotten their sorrows and dried their tears over its earnest 
pages. We have seen that, in the opinion of the Eev. C. 
Kingsley, the sentences are " priceless;" in that of our 
greatest female writer, who assumes the name of George 
Eliot, they are inspired utterances, speaking to every soul 
and to every age. To come down to the very moment at 
which we write, the Literary Churchman, an organ of 
the High Church, calls it " this queen of all uninspired 
books ; this marvellous book, which can bow the hearts 
of men and women of every class and creed ;" and the 
Nonconformist newspaper speaks of it as the widest, most 
spread, and most excellent of all comforting works. 

And yet the spirit of this good book is ascetic, distinctly 
and openly so. We have seen that the simple meaning 
of asceticism is merely the exercising of the body and 
mind in devout things; but at times it has included an 
obnoxious purpose — that is, a separation of oneself from 
the world. Whether good or bad in its effect depends 
much on its use or abuse. Half the people in the world — 
the poorer half — are forced into a kind of asceticism ; 
their poverty exercises them against their will. 

Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
Yet He grinds exceeding small. 

Few poor men can go through the mills of trouble, trial, 
and misfortune without being brought very nearly to the 
dust. But this asceticism has its dangerous side ; and 
able men, nay, good men too, have hated it. It produces, 
as a natural consequence, the monk's cell and the nun's 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. 73 

cloister. It makes people put on strange dresses and 
purchase beads and crosses, whether they be Hindus, 
Mohammedans, or Christians. It induces the monk to 
fast, and the nun to whip herself, and the Brahmin to 
clinch his hand for ever till the nails grow through the 
back of it, and his limbs are stiff and powerless. At 
Benares it makes men run iron hooks through their backs, 
and get others to whirl them round like cockchafers on a 
string. It forces some to abstain from meats or marriage, 
or any simple natural pleasures. It made St. Simeon 
Stylites live for thirty years on the top of a pillar, beseech- 
ing God daily, and nightly, and hourly, for pardon and 
grace, and to cry out that thrice ten years — 

In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and colds, 

In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes, and cramps — 

A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud, — 

Patient on this tall pillar, I have borne 

Kain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow, 

While my stiff spine can hold my weary head, 

Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone. 

In the present day it causes people to believe that God 

delights in the discomfort of his creatures ; at any rate, 

that he pleasingly beholds them torment themselves ; 

it makes us punish little children with Bible lessons they 

cannot comprehend, and terrify them with stories of Og, 

King of Bashan, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and visions 

of hell-fire ; it makes Sunday, dies Dominica, the sweet 

Lord's day, a dreaded Sabbath ; it interdicts the Sunday 

walk ; it glosses over and blots out the mercies of God with 

the roaring thunders of his wrath. 



74 VARIA. 

Hence asceticism, which in itself is beautiful and need- 
ful, has been so misrepresented that men hate it. Gibbon, a 
man of colossal intellect, much fairness, and great learning, 
wrote thus of it : " The Ascetics who obeyed and abused 
the rigid precepts of the Gospel were inspired with a rigid 
enthusiasm, which represents man as a criminal and God 
as a tyrant. They seriously renounced the business and 
pleasures of the age ; abjured the use of wine, of flesh, and 
of marriage ; chastised their body, mortified their affec- 
tions, and embraced a life of misery as the price of their 
eternal happiness." 

It is in the last clause of the above sentence that the 
mistake of asceticism lies. If we are fools enough to 
demand, as Stylites does, " the white robe and the palm " 
for the self-inflicted mortifications, we then are judge and 
jury on ourselves. And, unfortunately, man will play 
those parts. He is good and saintly, pure and charitable, 
but he gets filled with spiritual pride. Hence upon works 
of asceticism is built the damnable doctrine of works of 
supererogation. You have punished yourselves in this 
world ; reward yourselves in the next. You have said so 
many aves to-day, you need say none to-morrow. You 
fasted last week ; you can feast this. There is the carnival, 
the farewell to flesh ; and the dancing and junketings, 
when it may again be eaten. All this is flat against the 
words of the Apostles and Christ. The ascetics are upon 
the shifting sands of self-pleasing, even in the midst of their 
self-torments ; but happily we find little or nothing of this 
spirit in " Like unto Christ." 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. 75 

This author resembles Bunyan in his treatment of the 
world. He looks upon it as vanity, as Solomon did ; as a 
huge Vanity Fair, as the Pilgrim did ; but he goes on his 
way, and eats and drinks, and acts like a reasonable crea- 
ture. All that he does is to lay down rules for our guidance 
under trial, and consolations for our sorrows under defeat. 
He tells a man not to harass nor to hamper himself, very 
much in the words of Marcus Antoninus or Seneca : " A 
pure, simple, steadfast mind is not distracted with many 
duties, because it does all things for the glory of. God, and, 
in itself at ease, strives to be free from self-glory." He 
tells him, if he is young and sets to work to prepare him- 
self to be a man, to fight no baby's battle, no fool's fight. 
" Who has a harder battle than the man who tries to con- 
quer himself ?" He reminds him that, after all, it does not 
much matter if he is not very clever or great, for " humble 
self-knowledge is a surer road to God than diving into the 
depths of science. Science, considered in itself, is not 
sinful ; nor is the knowledge of anything that is good ; 
it has been ordained of God : but the preference must be 
given to a good conscience and a holy life." And, in 
Wynkyn de Worde's translation, he asks what has become 
of all the learned men long dead : " Where be now all the 
royal poets, with their craftily conveyed poems ; and elegant 
orators, with their orations garnished with elegancy ; the 
philosophers, with their pregnant reasons and sentences ?" 
And the author finishes by assuring us, u Truly learned 
is he who does the will of God, subduing also his own 
desires." 



76 VARIA. 

The prudential maxims of the writer are very well worthy 
of heing laid to our heart. A young man is not to open 
his heart to everybody ; to be " no fawner towards the 
wealthy, nor to be fond of being seen with great people ;" 
and he is to " exercise charity towards all, but intimacy 
with very few." 

To grow in spiritual progress, a man is especially 
warned not to interfere with other people's business, not to 
trouble himself with the sayings or doings of others, with 
what this one says, and that one thinks. Those matters 
do not concern us. " How is it possible," asks the author, 
" for a man to remain long at peace who intermeddles 
with other people's cares, who seeks occasions of dis- 
quietude abroad, and never examines himself at home?" 
How, indeed ? If we were " more intent upon self- im- 
provement, and less troubled about the outer world, then 
we might make some advance in wisdom." He tells us 
elsewhere that we should learn early to submit; trouble 
not ourselves who is on our side or who is against us ; that 
we should humble ourselves, and think ourselves chiefly in 
the wrong ; and that, unless we feel that we know worse 
of ourselves than of any others, we shall not be making 
much progress to the perfect life. If we want to play the 
peace-maker, we are to be at peace at home. The 
peace-maker is more useful than the learned ; for, " while 
the man of violence and passion turns even good to evil, 
he who follows peace turns evil to good ;" and so, there- 
fore, we are to be peaceful and gentle, and to avoid quar- 
rels, and to put up with slights and wrongs, and we shall 
be happy. 



THOMAS A KEMPIS. 77 

We are advised not to meddle with others, not to be in- 
quisitive ; for " what is it to thee whether a man does such 
and such, or sajs so and so ? Thou art not required to 
answer for others, but for thyself." We are not to care 
nor to follow fame, nor the friendship of many, nor the 
regard of men, for these things generate distraction and 
great darkness of heart. To be thoughtful, watchful in 
prayer, and humble at all times, will alone make a man as 
he should be. Of self-esteem we are told very truly, as 
most men know who have thought much, that we cannot 
place too little confidence in ourselves, for we are often 
wanting in grace and sense. " The light we have is but 
small, and that we often lose through negligence. Often- 
times our mental blindness we do not perceive ; ofttimes 
we act badly, and then make matters worse by our neg- 
ligent excuses. We often think and weigh what we have 
to bear through others, but what they have to bear through 
us does not occur to us." 

As the author of this precious book lived before men 
thought much of the suggestion of Duns Scotus, which, 
little more than a dozen years ago, the present Pope ex- 
alted into a dogma, it is by no means a surprising thing 
that A Kempis is utterly free from Mariolatry. He 
relies, like the Articles of the Anglican Church, upon 
one Name only, and finds none other under heaven given 
to man save that of Christ. " The kingdom of God is 
within you," he quotes from St. Luke in the beginning of 
the second book ; " betake thyself then entirely to God : 
love Him with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and bid a 



78 VARIA. 

final adieu to this wretched world, and thou shalt find 
sweet content and comfort unspeakable. Learn to despise 
these outward vanities, and seek pure and spiritual satis- 
factions. Place all thy hopes, thy happiness, thy thoughts 
in them, and thou shalt find this kingdom grow up within 
thee, 'for the kingdom of God is peace and joy in the 
Holy Ghost.' Kom. xiv. 17." This is Stanhope's trans- 
lation. It is worthy of remark, also, that there is hardly 
a page in the "Imitatio'' without its five or six references 
to or quotations from Holy Writ: a satisfactory proof 
that in the monastery, at least in those days, the Bible 
was diligently and devoutly studied. 

Such are a few of A Kempis's priceless sentences 
taken almost haphazard. We have said nothing, for our 
space will not allow us, upon the religious beauty and fer- 
vour of the work. Headers will find religion best preached 
in the pages of the book itself ; and it is scarcely our pro- 
vince to preach religion, although it may be our business to 
point the way to happiness and peace. The whole inten- 
tion of the author or authors is to awaken man to his true 
relation with God, the highest Intelligence, and to keep 
him from Materialism, the lowest Intelligence. Thus wrote 
a true poet : — 

Our little lives are kept in equipoise 
By struggles of two opposite desires — 

The struggle of the instinct that enjoys, 
And the more noble instinct that aspires. 



DE. JOHN FAUSTUS. 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

The Historie of the damnable life and deserued death of Doctor John 
Faustus. Newly imprinted and in conuent places amended: ac- 
cording to the true copie printed at Franckfort, and translated into 
English by P. F. GenU Scene and allowed. Imprinted at Lon- 
don by Thomas Orwin, and are to be solde by Edward White 
dwelling at the little North door of Paules, at the signe of the 
Gun. 1592. 

The Tragical historie of Dr. Fansfus. By Christopher Marlowe. 
4to. 1604. 

Uistoire prodigieuse et lamentable de Jean Fauste, grand et horrible 
enchanteur, avec sa morte tpouventable. Derniere edition. ARoven, 
chez Clement Malassis. m.dc.lxvii. 

Faustus : his Life, Death, and Descent into Hell. Translated from the 
German. By George Borrow (this is added in pencil). London. 
W. Simpkin and R. Marshal. 1825. 

Early English Prose Romances, with Bibliographical and Historical 
Illustrations. Edited by William J. Thorns, F.S.A. Vol. III. 
London. Nattali and Bond. 1858. 

Lives of Notorious Criminals, including that of Dr. Faustus. Chap- 
book. London, 1754. 

Die Geschichte vom Faust, in Reimen, nach dem einzigen bekannten 
Exemplar von 1587, in der Koniglichen Bibliothek zu Kopenhagen: 
Die Deutschen Volksbucher von Faust und Wagner, §*c. Von I. 
Scheible. Stuttgart, 1849. 

Festus, a Poem. By Philip James Bailey. Sixth Edition. Chap- 
man and Hall. 1860. 





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DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 

HISTORY, or a legend, or a mixture of 
both, which, has not only furnished a sub- 
ject for " Marlowe's mighty line/' but has 
given to Goethe the plot of the greatest 
poem of the century, or, if we believe some, of all time, is 
worth our attention. When, moreover, this history has 
become the subject of as many volumes as would fill a 
goodly bookcase ; when our children delight over that 
which horrified and astonished our great-great-grand- 
fathers, one feels that there must be in it an element of 
popularity which is as enduring as it is perhaps difficult 
to account for. How many, too, are there who merely 
know the name and nothing else of the hero. If, at a 
competitive examination, the question, " Who was Faustus, 
and when did he flourish?" were proposed, how few would 
be able to answer it. It is not every one who can go to 
Mr. Thoms's capital book on early English prose romances, 
or to the People's Wonder-Book of Herr Scheible. The 
history of Faustus is involved so much in doubt, and at 

a 



82 VARIA. 

the same time has so many points of interest for us, that 
it is worth while spending a few minutes over it. 

66 Truth is great, and will prevail/' is a grand asser- 
tion, and one which has often consoled the dying mo- 
ments of the martyr ; but it will scarcely bear the calmer 
and closer investigation of the philosopher. Truth differs 
from truth, but not more than it essentially differs from 
itself; for, as the well-cut brilliant, when it comes from- 
the hands of the lapidary, has its sixty-two facets — 
thirty-three above the belt, and twenty-nine below it — so 
each truth, after being handled by the historian, would 
seem to have at least sixty-two aspects, or, indeed, as' 
many more, perhaps, as there may be people to look at 
it. As history is, according to some, a mere collection of 
biographies, biographical truth might be expected to be 
the simplest; but, not excepting that of Shakespeare, of 
whom we know little more than the date of his birth, mar- 
riage, and death, there is hardly a name in the " Biogra- 
phie Universelle " about whom writers have not wrangled 
so much as to make the earnest student repeat the question 
of him whom Bacon calls jesting Pilate, and turn away in 
disgust. The occupation of the writers of one age seems to 
be that of whitewashing the black sheep of a past one — - 
an employment in which both Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Froude 
have made themselves conspicuous ; and, as there was 
found, soon after his death, one hand at least which scat- 
tered flowers on the tomb of Nero, we may possibly soon 
meet with an eccentric historian who will prove that both 
that emperor and Caligula were men of the highest moral 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 83 

calibre, and with reference to whom it were, at any rate, 
as well to entertain historic doubts. When a character has 
been well blackened, however, it is exceedingly difficult 
thoroughly to cleanse it. Notwithstanding Horace Wal- 
pole^s clever tract, and the more acute suggestions of his 
successors, we doubt whether Richard III. will not re- 
main to the end of all time the crook-backed tyrant of 
Shakespeare, and the politic scoundrel of our school his- 
tories. Many people are fascinated by the coloured and 
sparkling rays thus brightly thrown out by a polished and 
cut truth. A university professor, in his inaugural lecture 
some short time back, fairly owned that he rather pre- 
ferred his early and more popular ideas, and that, 
although some great writer might arise who would under- 
take to prove that Henry VIII. was a mild gentleman, 
exceedingly ill-used by ladies who deserved their fate, he 
would still rather cling to his old faith in the embodiment 
of an historic blustering and hectoring Blue Beard. No 
doubt many share a like feeling. 

One of those characters about whose various biogra- 
phies there is just the smallest scintillation of truth, and 
who has now fairly become the property of fiction, is Dr. 
Faust, known with us as Faustus, a German scholar who 
flourished in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and 
who has been constantly confused with Fust, the assist- 
ant, or, as some say, the patron of Gutenberg, who in- 
troduced into Germany moveable types about the same 
period. John Fust, who was evidently the capitalist, 
joined with Gutenberg and Schoeffer, the inventor of the 



84 VABIA. 

letter-punches, and by a law-suit dispossessed Gutenberg 
of any benefit from his discovery. Perhaps, therefore, 
any ignominy which may attach to his name he richly 
deserves ; in fact, the theory of many is that the illumin- 
ators, missal and psalter writers, who were beaten out of the 
market by his machinery, invented the legends concerning 
him — viz. that he was aided by a personal attendant, a 
friendly Devil, who, after serving him for a stated number 
of years, at length bore him quick to hell as a payment 
for his services. Now, although we have been expressly 
warned not to confound the two Fausts, we believe that 
they have already been inextricably confounded, and that 
what simply belongs to one has been asserted of the other. 
The Dr. Faustus was an astrologer and a chemist ; and 
it is certainly not unlikely that popular superstition may 
have gifted him with a " familiar," just as it did Polydore 
Vergil, Jerome Cardan, and Paracelsus ; of this latter brag- 
gadocio chemist it is said that he had one confined in the 
pummel of his sword. It is notable, also, that Faustus's 
Christian name, like that of Fust, was Johann. The sub- 
ject of our sketch was born at Knittlingen, in Suabia, of 
peasant parents. He studied at Wittenberg ; removed to 
Ingoldstadt, where he practised as a physician ; received 
a considerable inheritance ; was known to Melancthon, 
Tritheim, and other men of note of the period; gave 
himself up to magic, and died of the plague, in 1466 — 
or, as tradition will have it, was carried away, as per con- 
tract — at a little village called Eimlich. For this latter, 
legendary occurrence, one or more villages, following the 



DE. JOHN FAUSTUS. 85 

example of the seven towns which contest the honour of 
Homer's birthplace, put in a claim — especially Breda, in 
Saxony, a small village on the Elbe, where the blood- 
besprinkled walls of the apartment may be seen, and 
where, to quote Jack Cade's friend, the " very bricks are 
alive to this day," to testify to the truth. 

"That this hero was no imaginary one," says Mr* 
Thorns, " is clearly proved by the testimony of contem- 
porary writers. Amongst the most important of these is the 
famous Trithemius, who, in a letter to Johann Wedunger, 
dated the 20th August, 1507, speaks of the -subject of this 
notice as one ' qui se principem necromanticorum ausus 
est nominare, gyrovagus, battologus et circumcellio est,' 
and as having formed for himself this fitting title, ' Magis- 
ter Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus junior, Fons Necroman- 
ticorum, Astrologus, Magus secundus, Chiromanticus, 
Agromanticus, Pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus.' 
In 1539 he is mentioned by Begardo, in his c Index Sani- 
tatis.' Gastius also alludes to him in his ' Sermones Con- 
viviales ;' and he is also alluded to by Manilius in his 
' Collectanea,' on the authority of Melancthon." Gones tells 
us that, though there is much conflicting evidence as to 
where he was born and when he lived and flourished, 
there is little doubt of his being an historical personage, 
" and one who had wit to take advantage of the times in 
which he lived," and whose quicker wit and boldness saw 
through the superstitious fears of his countrymen and 
laughed at them. 

This quickness of wit and boldness of conception, this 



86 VABIA. 

superiority to those around him, met with the not unusual 
reward of his being exalted into a wizard and of having 
dealings with the devil. Nay, like others, he, too, must 
have an attendant devil ; and Mephistopheles was called in 
early to serve him as a valet, and to transport him, for a 
due consideration, whither he chose, and as rapidly as 
possible. Thus he travels round the world in eight days, 
and sees all the glories, riches, and wonders thereof. 

So singular a story seems to have at once seized on 
the popular mind. It was quickly dramatized in Germany, 
and presented with the other monkish legends and plays ; 
and in thirty years from the time our own Marlowe had 
formed upon it a splendid work which had been acted with 
applause. Since that time, nearly fifty different poems and 
dramas have been built upon the story — two of the best, 
excepting, of course, Goethe's, being by Klingemann and 
Roder. Lastly, Goethe elaborates it into the most re- 
markable fiction of modern times, and one which is the 
chief corner-stone of his fame. A writer would, one 
might suppose, as soon think of re-writing Hamlet as of 
rehabilitating " Faust;" but, notwithstanding that we have 
thirty-three translations of Goethe's great work, a modern 
English poet, James Philip Bailey, has dared it in Festus, 
and has spasmodically succeeded ; and a modern play- 
wright has yet more recently put the subject on the boards 
of the Princess's Theatre as Faust and Marguerite. 
What we now propose is, to give the old legend, with some 
of its blunt English padding, referring now and then to 
" Marlowe's mighty line," to point out what people miss 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 87 

who neglect our elder dramatists. Marlowe had indeed a 
method of throwing ten syllables together in a way as for- 
cible and as original as any master of blank verse that ever 
lived. Dryden, a great writer, comes somewhat near him 
in force ; Webster and Dekker still more closely in rough 
and ponderous weight; Milton in majestic diction and 
splendid energy: but no one combines all so much as 
Marlowe himself in his best verses. 

But to return to our Doctor. The author of one of 
these little histories begins with a sage remark upon the 
difference between ignorance and knowledge ; and, after the 
good old manner of Pinnock in his histories, he dabs about 
ten lines of very bald verse on the top of his chapter, 
which he afterwards translates into prose, to the effect that 
we should not attempt to know too much, " as the events 
about to be recorded in this history will, in our opinion, 
unless we greatly err, fully evince." John Faustus, he 
continues, was born in a small hamlet, in the province of 
Wiemar : his father was a poor labouring man, but his 
uncle, who lived at Wittenberg, " took the young Faustus 
and adopted him, and made him heir to his property. Thus, 
instead of being doomed to follow at the plough tail, to 
work early and late, and to live upon the most homely fare, 
our hero was destined to bask in the sunshine of affluence, 
to tread the flowery meads of learning, to drink at the im- 
mortal fount, to climb Helicon's bank, and thereby to reach 
the temple of fame. Young Faustus, now become the 
favourite of his uncle, ivho had a good living in his gift, was 
sent to study divinity at Wittenberg, the same place at which 



88 VAEIA. 

' Hamlet, Prince of Denmark ' was educated, and which 
is rendered immortal by the pen of our unmatched 
Shakspeare." 

The " good living " originated of course from the hand 
of our English chap-hook maker ; but all authorities agree 
that Faust went to Wittenberg. " Son oncle, qui demeura 
a Wittenberg/' says a French author; and an old ballad in 
one of the four thick squat volumes of nearly 1300 pages 
each, which Scheible has published in Das Kloster, opens 
with the following verses — 

Es ist der Doctor Faustus nun 
Gewesen eines Bauren Sun : 
Zu Rodt ben Weinmar biirtig her, 
Zu Wittemberg so hat auch er 
Ein Freundschafft gross ; &c. &c. 

At this place " he prosecuted his studies until he had 
exhausted the stores of learning ; he regularly passed " all 
the various minor academical degrees with credit to him- 
self and honour to his tutors, and " was inducted into his 
uncle's living, and looked up to as a most impressive and 
orthodox preacher." But, alas ! — 

The devil cunningly prepares, 
And for his victims spreads his snares ; 
Thus Faustus in a luckless hour 
Submitted was to Satan's power. 

The fact was, he " consorted with alchemists, a herd of im- 
postors, the disgrace of the age ;" and, determining to be 
the top of the tree, he consulted his oracles, wherein he 
66 found it was requisite to undergo a probation of forty 
days, during which he must five times every day invoke the 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 89 

Prince of Darkness, trample on the Bible, seclude himself 
from society, and drink morning and evening, repeating 
his diabolical lessons, two spoonfuls of Devil's soup ; he 
drew a magical circle on the floor, then set with diligence 
getting together the materials of his infernal diet. . . . 
With no common degree of fortitude, he began to rummage 
the churchyards for bones of a particular description, in the 
hollows of which worms of a peculiar shape and colour had 
engendered ; he then procured newts of a month old, the 
eyes of dead brindled sows, eagles' eggs with five black 
spots on them, hoofs of cows that had died of the murrain, 
heads and legs of toads, spawn of frogs, genitals of scor- 
pions, tongues of crocodiles, livers of male black rats, toes 
of nightingales, brains of white boars above three years old, 
and spurs of game cocks ; the whole of this was boiled to 
a consistence with w T hale's sperm and snails, to which he 
added every morning seventy-three drops of his own blood, 
taken from his left arm by himself" ! Having concocted 
this devilish potion, which certainly by far exceeds the 
milder concoction in Middleton's Witch or Shakespeare's 
Macbeth , he in all things conformed himself to his " proba- 
tionary state, tearing Bibles to pieces, and treading the 
scattered leaves under his feet. He soon knew that he 
was rapidly advancing to his desired amo, and having 
covered his head with a woollen cap, on which was painted 
a skull and cross-bones, together with a figure of the devil, 
he began to invoke the devil in Low Dutch." 

The next few pages of this imaginative history are 
filled with a description which would very well suit the 



90 VARIA. 

celebrated scene in Der Freischiitz. Faustus is surrounded 
by all kinds of terrors. He drinks the soup, and dances 
on the leaves of the Bible ; he hears the very thunders of 
Hell, sees a frightful dragon with a " three -pronged pitch- 
fork," a hare chasing a lion, a hyena swallowing little 
children, and a little man with a cocked hat, who says, 
" Friend Faustus, my master, Lucifer, has sent me here 
to ask what wantest thou ?" to whom Faustus truculently 
replies that u he wants his master, and would see him, if he 
were buried in fifty hells deeper than he is." The messen- 
ger disappears, the hurly-burly recommences, and a great 
ball of fire runs round and round the circle with incredible 
velocity, from which a voice of thunder cries out, " Mortal, 
what wantest thou ? " The Doctor, nothing daunted, 
" recruited himself with a spoonful of soup," and challenged 
the Devil to come forth, upon which the ball of fire opens, 
and Beelzebub enters on the scene. 

The clever Doctor fancied that he had outwitted the 
Prince of Darkness, for, when the latter asked him to be 
his, " body and soul," for ever, Faustus said, " Nay, I 
will not ; I will have all I desire of thee, but will not be 
damned." Upon the Fiend putting this little matter in 
the right way, he receives the skin of a human body ; upon 
which he agrees to make out certain requisitions, and a 
conveyance of his body and soul to the Devil. He goes 
home to his study, and diligently draws out these articles, 
of which there are nine. The Devil is to be at his command, 
to do his bidding, to give him exhaustless wealth, to render 
him invisible, to convey him anywhere in one moment, te 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 91 

raise the dead or bring before him any living person, to 
show him the interior of hell, and, finally, " to lay aside his 
devilish propensity for lying, and when questioned tell me 
nothing but the truth. 

(Signed) John Faustus." 

The Devil soon, in an awful clap of thunder, sends up a 
series of replies, in which the chief requisitions are granted, 
but in which the last assertion is very positively denied : — 
" I will answer all your questions truly : the world does me 
injustice to tax me with want of veracity ; let them ask their 
conscience if I ever deceived them, or made them believe 
a bad action was a good one ? " A shrewd question truly ! 

u Moreover" (the deed concludes) " I hereby promise to 
let my trusty servant, Mephistopheles, be ever at your call, 
and further, allow you twenty-four years to enjoy the 
privileges purchased at so dear a rate. 

" Signed, by order of Lucifer, Prince of the Hellish 
Regions ; by us, Judges of his Infernal Domain ; and in 
his name we say Amen, it shall be so. 

" Rhadamanthus. 
" Minos. 
" JEacus." 

Here, again, is that mixture of Paganism with modern 
belief which seems so necessary for the poet. We should 
scarcely have dreamt of the Homeric and Virgilian judges 
serving under the Hebraic Satan. Que voulez-vous ? there 
are none other witnesses at hand. The bonds berno- ex- 



92 VARIA. 

changed, Mephistopheles is assigned to Faustus. He pre- 
sents his new master with one of the keys of Hell, say- 
ing : — " Take this : its possession is a favour never before 
granted to mortal. Whenever you wish to see me, if you 
hold up this key above your head, and say, GlisJimaramoth 
Teufel, I shall instantly appear in the shape you now see 
me ;" which was that of a dapper little man dressed in black, 
very much like a French abbe. Next we find related many of 
the doings of Faustus, scarcely worth repeating. He was, 
we are told, a man of some humour ; and he shows it much 
in the same manner as some of our fast young men would 
do. He set all the cocks in Wittenberg crowing for three 
hours without intermission, and once, " just as the parson 
had mounted the pulpit," got all the pigs within six miles 
to come to church — such a grunting and squeaking being 
never before heard. Many of these tricks we must put 
down to the English fancy of the poor scribe who vamped 
up this book. One day he makes all the old maids of 
Wittenberg, " each with a penny pie and a tabby cat," 
walk on one side of the street, and the old bachelors on the 
other. At another time, " at a grand levee held by the 
Emperor of China," all the Mandarins and nobles began 
hissing at and thumping each other ; and when the Emperor 
blew his nose, he blew out — not his brains, as the American 
story has it — but nothing but butterflies and worms. 
Faustus sets the " Great Mogul" and all his court sneezing; 
and at a sumptuous repast given to the Emperor of Persia 
he causes all the wine to flow from decanter to glass con- 
tinually. He makes almanacs — here we are reminded of 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 93 

the Doctor — and is more successful than our own Professor 
Murphy ; for what he predicted, rain, hail, frost, or snow, 
invariably occurred. He wishes to marry, hut a fiend with 
a fearful name, " Ghasthomio," gives him such a whipping 
with hot wires and scorpions that he repents. Marriage, 
the fiend says, is a holy state, but yet he may have his 
desire in another way. He asks where Hell is, and 
receives in the answer a curious melange of the Hebrew 
Gehenna and the classic Tartarus. It is probable that we 
never shall escape the bondage of these ideas : even the 
wonderful imagination of Dante is constrained to adopt 
them. But the splendid diction and the atmosphere of 
Protestant thought in which Marlowe lived saved him from 
this ; and to the same question Mephistopheles replies with 
a fine anticipation of that subjective view of Hell of which 
we have a good deal at present : — 

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed 
In one self place ; but where we are is hell ; 

And where hell is there must we ever be. 

And, to be short, when all the world dissolves, 

And every creature shall be purified, 

All places shall be hell that are not heaven. 

"1 think there be no such place as hell," says Faustus, 
superciliously ; and his attendant is glad that he thinks so 
till he is fully entrapped. Mr. George Borrow indeed 
makes the Devil turn the tables on man, and say, with some 
humour, as the concluding sentence of his ghastly book : — 
" When men wish to represent anything abominable, 
they paint the Devil ; let us, therefore, in revenge, when 



94 VABIA. 

we wish to represent anything infamous, depict man ; and 
philosophers, popes, priests, conquerors, ministers, and 
authors (!) shall serve us as models. " 

Hell is, however, not long a matter of doubt to the Doc- 
tor, for he visits it ; while, previously to this visit, Mephis- 
topheles had described it thus : — " My Faustus, knowe that 
Hell is, as thou wouldest thinke with thy selfe, another world, 
in the which we have our being, under the earth, and 
above the earth, even to the heavens, within the circum- 
ference whereof are contained ten kingdomes — namely, 



1. Lacus Mortis. 

2. Stagnum Ignis. 

3. Terra tenebrosa. 

4. Tartarus. 

5. Terra oblivionis. 



6. Gehenna. 

7. Herebus. 

8. Barathrum. 

9. Styx. 
10. Acheron. 



The which kingdomes are governed by five kings — that is, 
Lucifer in the Orient ; Belial in Meridie ; Astaroth in 
Occidente ; and Phlegethon in the middest of them all : 
whose rule and dominions have none end until the day of 
Dome. And thus farre, Faustus, hast thou heard of our 
rule and kingdomes." 

We do not, in the old legends, find many hints towards 
the wonderful scenes which Goethe has created. The 
tricks of Faustus are clumsy and countrified, and on a 
par with the stories related in the " Hundred Merry Tales 
of Shakespeare." Of the wonderful scene in the cellar, 
illustrated finely by Ketzsch, and our own painter, Theo- 
dore von Hoist, there is this mere skeleton : — 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 95 

" How Faustus serued the dronken Clownes. 

66 Dr. Faustus went into an Inne, wherein were many 
tables full of Clownes, the which were tippling kan after 
kan of excellent wine, and to bee short they were all 
dronken, and as they sate so they sung and haUowed, 
that one could not heare a man speake for them ; this 
angred Doctor Faustus ; wherefore he said to those that 
called him in, marke my masters I will shew you a merry 
jest. The clownes continuing still hallowing and singing, 
he so conjured them, that theire mouthes stood as wide 
open as it was possible for them to holde them, and never 
a one of them was able to close his mouthe again : by and 
by the noyse was gone, the clownes not withstanding 
looked earnestly one upon another, and wist not what 
was happened ; wherefore one by one they went out, and 
so soon as they came without they were as well as ever 
they were ; but none of them desired to goe in any 
more." 

This scene our English dramatist has followed, making 
each clown close his sentence with a filthy double entendre, 
no doubt for the purpose of tickling the ears of the ground- 
lings. He also makes "Fayre Helena" of Greece the 
mistress of the Doctor ; " for," says E. P. Gent, " she 
was so beautifull and delightful a peece that Faustus could 
not bear to be one moment out of her sight." The Ger- 
man poem has a canto, the twenty-sixth, — 

" Von der Helena aus Grichenland ; " 
and, indeed, so alluring a subject was not likely to be 



96 VARIA. 

omitted by the book-makers. It is found in almost all 
the copies. Helen bears him a son, called Justus Faustus, 
but he, being a succubus, disappears with his phantom 
mother. Here is the picture of the fair Helena, showed 
by Faustus to the students : " This lady appeared before 
them in a most rich gown of purple velvet, costly embroi- 
dered ; her hair hanging down loose, as fair as the beaten 
gold, and of such length that it reached down to her hams ; 
having most amorous cole-black eyes ; a sweet and plea- 
sant round face, with lips as red as any cherry ; her cheeks 
of a rose colour, her mouth small, her neck white as a 
swan ; tall and slender of personage ; in sum, there was 
no imperfect place in her; she looked round about her 
with a rolling hawk's eye, a smiling and wanton counte- 
nance, which near hand inflamed the hearts of all the 
students, but that they persuaded themselves she was a 
spirit, which made them lightly pass away such fancies." 

Very beautifully has Marlowe dramatised this scene of 
the legend. Helen is made one of the instruments of the 
fall of Faustus, and of his temptation by Mephistopheles ; 
and, indeed, the German doctor, upon the sight of this 
instrument of temptation, falls into a love ecstasy, and 
utters one of the most ardent and enthusiastic rhapsodies 
on beauty that was ever conceived. 

"Was this fair Helen -whose admired worth 
Made Greece with ten years' war afflict poor Troy ?" 

asks the second scholar when he sees her ; but the Doctor 
speaks not so tamely. 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 97 

" Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? 
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kis3. 
Her lips suck forth my soul ! see where it flies ; 
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in those lips, 
And all is dross that is not Helena. 
I will be Paris, and for love of thee, 
Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack'd ; 
And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest. 
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ; 
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter, 
When he appear'd to hapless Semele ; 
More lovely than the monarch of the sky, 
In wanton Arethusa's azure arms ; 
And none but thou shalt be my paramour !" 

It is worth our while here to glance at the following por- 
tions of a ballad, Eoxburghe Collection (vol. hi. p. 280), 
which Mr. Thorns supposes may be a modernized version 
of one of 1588, "A Ballad of the Life and Death of 
Doctor Faustus, the great congerer," licensed to be printed 
by the learned Aylmer, Bishop of London, and which 
it has been pointed out is very little more than an English 
version of the German Metrical Volksbuch, put forward 
at Tubingen by Alexander Hock, in the same year. The 
English ballad, of which we have printed a few verses, 
was sung to the tune of Fortune my Foe, a very popular 
one at the end of the sixteenth century. 



98 VARIA. 



The Just Judgment of God shewed upon Dr. Faustus. 

All Christian men give ear a while to me, 
How I am plung'd in pain but cannot see : 
I liv'd a life the like did none before, 
Forsaking Christ, and I am damn'd therefore. 

At Wertemburgh, a town in Germany, 
There was I born and bred of good degree, 
Of honest stock, which afterwards I sham'd, 
Accurst therefore, for Faustus was I nam'd. 

In learning high my uncle brought up me, 
And made me Doctor of Divinity : 
And when he dy'd he left me all his wealth, 
Which cursed gold did hinder my soul's health. 

Then did I shun the Holy Bible book, 

Nor on God's word would never after look ; 

But studied the accursed conjuration, 

Which was the cause of my utter damnation. , 



At last, when I had but one hour to come, 
I turn'd the glass for my last hour to run : 
And called in learned men to comfort me, 
But Faith was gone, and none could succour me. 



Then presently they came unto the hall, 
Whereas my brains were cast against the wall ; 
Both arms and legs in pieces they did see, 
My bowels gone, there was an end of me. 

You conjurors and damned witches all, 
Example take by my unhappy fall : 
Give not your souls and bodies unto hell, 
See that the smallest hair you do not sell. 



BE. JOHN FAUSTUS. 99 

But hope in Christ his kingdom you may gain, 
Where you shall never fear such mortal pain ; 
Forsake the Devil, and all his crafty ways, 
Embrace true Faith that never more decays. 

In the Faustus of George Borrow, which is a wild re- 
vengeful satire on Popes, Protestants, Kings, People, and 
Authors, we find that the Doctor visits England — nay, in- 
deed, that he is more disgusted with our country than with 
any other. " Not all the charms of the blooming English- 
women could keep him any longer in this cursed isle, 
which he quitted with hatred and disgust, for neither in 
France nor in Germany had he seen crimes committed 
with so much coolness and impunity." As they leave 
the island, the Devil vents a prophecy and gives an opinion 
on us English which, seeing that it is well to be despised 
of the Devil, one may venture to extract : — 

" These people will groan for a time beneath the yoke 
of despotism, they will then sacrifice one of their kings 
on the scaffold of freedom, in order that they may sell them- 
selves to his successor for gold and titles. In hell there 
is very little respect paid to these gloomy islanders, who 
would suck the marrow from all the putrid carcases in the 
universe if they thought they could find gold in the bones. 
They boast of their morality and despise all nations, yet 
if you were to place what you call virtue in one scale, and 
vice with twopence in the other, they would forget their 
morality and pocket the money. They talk of their 
honour and integrity, but never enter into a treaty without 
a firm resolution of breaking it, as soon as a farthing can 



100 VAUIA. 

be gained by so doing. After death they inhabit the 
most pestilential marsh in the kingdom of darkness, and 
their souls are scourged without mercy. None of the 
other damned will have anything to do with them. If the 
inhabitants of the continent could do without sugar and 
coffee, the sons of proud England would soon return to the 
state in which they were when Julius Csesar, Canute of 
Denmark, and William the Conqueror did them the honour 
to invade them." 

Faustus visits the planets, and in Venus amongst other 
curiosities meets with women who do not spoil their figures 
by bearing children, but depositing eggs in the sun so 
hatch them. The Doctor runs through the usual vicious, 
foolish course, but at last the twenty-four years expire, and 
Mephistopheles in a jovial humour thus accosts him : — 

" Come, my Faustus, you have had your career, and a 
lewd and merry one it has been ; do not act the coward at 
the end." 

Which request is indeed of no more comfort than Jack 
Ketch offered to a highwayman. The Doctor, seeing no 
escape, gives a grand banquet, tells his friends his fate, 
and — 

" As the clock struck twelve, the Devil and Gasthomio 
appeared ; Faustus made a stout resistance, uttering the 
most piercing cries, but the demons soon mastered him ; 
when the latter, taking him upon his pitchfork, flew away 
with him in a storm of thunder and lightning." 

After this very bare prose, the poetry of Marlowe must 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 101 

strike everyone. When about to die, the Faustus of this 
great play utters this fine soliloquy : — 

Faustus ! 

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, 

And then thou must be damned perpetually. 

Stand still, thou ever moving spheres of heaven, 

That time may cease and midnight never come ; 

Fair nature's eye rise, rise again and make 

Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but a year, 

A month, a week, a natural day, 

That Faustus may repent and save his soul. , 

O lente lente currite noctis. equi! 

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, 

The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. 

Then follows a scene of wonderful horror, extracted in the 
" Dramatic Specimens" of Charles Lamb, who speaks of 
it with a delicate and sweet appreciation. The soul of 
Faustus is borne away ; and in the morning the scholars 
find in his study his mangled limbs, which they gather up 
for decent burial, and as they go out the solemn chorus 
pronounces his epitaph : — 

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, 

And burned is Apollo's laurel bough 

That some time grew within this learned man. 

Faustus is gone ; regard his hellish fall 

Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise 

Only to wonder at unlawful things, 

Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits, 

To practise more than heavenly power permits. 

Such is the story of our English Faustus. The legend 
in Germany seems so suited to the Teutonic mind that it 



102 VARIA. 

will never be forgotten. The amount of literature, critical, 
descriptive, or romantic, expended on the legend is in 
itself prodigious. It seems that, as an embodiment of the 
history of one who yielded to temptation and finally paid 
the penalty of his weakness and wickedness, the story is 
admirably suited for the purposes of the satirist or the 
moralist, while the variety of scenes and the vast scope 
given for the working of the machinery of the romance 
have been at once perceived by the inventive and poetic 
minds of every age. Hence, starting from almost fresh 
standpoints, Goethe and Bailey have, in Faust and Festus, 
produced poems each of which bears not only the impress 
of the author's mind, but also of the age in which he lived. 
" The intended theme of Goethe's Faust," says Coleridge, 
" is the consequences of a misology, or hatred and de- 
preciation of knowledge caused by an originally intense 
thirst for knowledge bafHed. But a love of knowledge 
for itself, and pure ends would never produce such mis- 
ology, but only a love of it for base and unworthy pur- 
poses." Thus philosophically viewing the great cause, it 
is not to be wondered at, that before Coleridge had seen 
any part of Goethe's Faust,* though of course when I was 
familiar enough with Marlowe's, I conceived and drew up 
the plan of a drama which was to be, to my mind, what 
the Faust was to Goethe's. My Faust was old Michael 



* "The poem was first published in 1790, and forms the com- 
mencement of the seventh volume of Goethe's Schriften, Wien 
und Leipzig, bey 8. Stael und G. J, Goschen, 1790." — Coleridge's 
Note. 



DR. JOHN FAUSTUS. 103 

Scott ; a much better and more likely original than Faust." 
Coleridge then enters into a sketch of his plot, and the 
similarity between it and that of Goethe is remarkable. 
His hero does not love knowledge for itself — for its own 
exceeding great reward, but in order to be powerful. 
" This poison speck infects his mind from the beginning." 
Alas, a poison speck infecting too many minds. Im- 
prisoned by the priests, and as he feels unjustly, for five 
years, he eventually escapes and begins his great revenge. 
He turns to witchcraft, and at last tries to raise the devil, 
and the devil comes at his call. " My devil," writes Cole- 
ridge, " was to be, like Goethe's, the universal humourist, 
who should make all things vain and nothing worth, by a 
perpetual collation of the great with the little in the pre- 
sence of the Infinite. I had many a trick for him to play, 
some better, I think, than any in Faust." In the mean- 
time Miehael is miserable, power does not bring happiness, 
and he has to keep the devil perpetually employed by im- 
posing the most extravagant tasks, but one thing is to 
the devil as easy as another, " What next Michael ? is 
repeated every day with the most imperious servility." In 
the end Coleridge had made Michael Scott triumphant, 
and " poured peace into his soul in the conviction of salva- 
tion to sinners through God's grace." 

Many are the works projected or dreamt of by the fertile 
brains of English authors, the non-completion of which we 
have sadly to regret, and not the least to be deplored is 
this intended drama of Coleridge. One remark its study 
has won for us which is worth pondering ; his devil " makes 



104 VABIA. 

all things vain and nothing worth by a perpetual collation 
of the great with the small in the presence of the Infinite." 
This is an old and yet ever new trick of the would-be 
philosophical sneerers, and no one could have better ex- 
posed the sophistry of those who use it than Coleridge. 
But it is by no means yet played out; indeed we may 
imagine that in succeeding centuries Dr. Johann Faustus 
will oft start up, a fine modern gentleman, with old-new 
sneers at the priesthood, at a belief in goodness, virtue, 
and God ; and that Mephistopheles, shaped according to 
the fashion of the times, will captivate the minds of poetic 
youth, by his bold wickedness, his hardihood towards the 
Almighty, and his contempt of the creature of whose 
damnation he is the agent. 

As we look in the British Museum at the beautiful 
type, ink, and printing of the Mazarine Bible, so difficult 
to an unpractised eye to be distinguished from a manuscript, 
which was the first production of Gutenberg and Johann 
Faust, we can understand why the puzzled scribes and 
illuminators put their heads together to slander the pro- 
ducer. Not comprehending his process, they must have 
believed that the Devil aided one who could produce one 
hundred bibles or psalters in less than half the time in 
which they could produce one. May we not, then, fairly 
suppose that, after all, the printer and not the Doctor was 
the nucleus around which the most enticing fable of mo- 
dern times has been gathered ? Two facts are certain — 
both the Fausts lived about the same period, and both 
bore the same Christian name. 



QUEVEDO. 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

SismondVs Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe. 
Translated by Thomas Roscoe. Bonn, 1846. 

BouterweKs {Fred.) History of Spanish Literature, Bogue, 1847. 

Hollands Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, 
and 17 th centuries. Fourth edition. John Murray, 1854. 

History of Spanish Literature, with Criticisms on particular Works, 
§•<?. By George Ticknor. Vol. II. New Edition. John Murray, 
1855. 

The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas, Knight of the 
Order of St. James. Made English by Sir Roger L'Estrange, 
Knt. The 11th edition corrected. London, printed by W. B. 
for Richard Saie, near Grays-Inn Gate in Holbourn, 1715. (5th 
edition, G. R. L., in 1673.) 

The Comical Works of Francis de Quevedo, containing the Night 
Adventurer, the Life of Paul the Spanish Sharper, $•<?• Translated 
from the Spanish by J. Stevens. London, 1707. 

The Controversy about Resistance and Non-resistance discussed in 
Moral and Political Reflections on Marcus Brutus, who slew Julius 
Ccesar. Written in Spanish by D. F. de Q. V. Translated into 
English and published in defence of Dr. Henry Sacheverel, by 
order of a noble lord who voted in his behalf. London, 1710. 

Ohras de D. Francisco Quevedo- Villegas Coleccion completa, corri- 
geda ordenada € illustrata por Don A. Fernandez Gueira y Orbe 
(Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles.) Tom, 22, &c. 1849. 

Obras Escogidas de D. F. de Quevedo y Villegas, con notas y una 
noticia de su vida y escritos por Don Eugenio de Ochoa. Paris. 
Obras serias, obras jocosas, obras potticas. 1842. 





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QUE VED 

A.D. 1580—1645. 




JF all the weapons of the human intellect 
satire is perhaps the keenest and that which 
inspires the most dread. Of all, also, its 
effects have been the widest and the most 
beneficial. Happily for us, none but good men have been 
supremely gifted with this tremendous power. We do 
not say that Aristophanes, Horace, Terence, Persius, or 
Juvenal were the best of men ; or that, speaking of modern 
times, Rabelais, Cervantes, Quevedo, Swift, Pope, or 
Moliere were saints. Sancti, holy men, that sense of the 
word will not hold with them ; nay, even if judged by the 
highest possible standard of excellence, they were but 
frail and faulty men ; as weak as some of those whom 
they condemned : but we do think that they, like David, 
had continual impulses towards wisdom, goodness, and 
truth ; that they often embraced these impulses, and that 
they maintained a very high standard of honesty through 
poverty and persecution ; that they possessed a courage 



108 VAEIA. 

which never gave way ; a spirit and a sense of their own 
dignity which kept them from being base; an ever-re- 
curring love of truth and nature ; a belief in the beauty of 
humanity, and a wonderful boldness, which constantly 
urged them to speak out and smite dishonesty, impurity, 
and baseness, even in high places and in the breasts of 
the great and powerful of the world. "Without these 
feelings, which have of themselves something of the heroic, 
a true satirist cannot exist; for a satirist is not to be 
degraded to the rank of a scandal-monger, who retails the 
stories of a village, or the faux pas of a court : but he is 
to be regarded as a large-souled well-wisher to humauity, 
who, speaking the truth with sharp severity, places it in 
that light which, if it pains the guilty, yet awakens him 
to the enormity of his villanies, and makes him hate the 
crime which he has hitherto loved. 

It has happened, however, by a natural consequence, 
that satire is the most dangerous of all weapons to him 
who uses it. It is a hiltless sword which, though it 
pierces the antagonist, cuts the hands of him who wields 
it. A turn for satire verse has ruined more poets than 
one. The truth itself does not please at all times, and it 
is certain that truth, sharply told, always wounds. If 
from the lips of Divinity it could only urge those who 
heard it to ensnare and slay the speaker, we may be sure 
that from the mouth of mortality its proximate effects 
must be the same. We find this in every case. Defoe 
imprisoned and driven half mad ; Swift in disgrace break- 
ing his proud heart ; Eabelais forced to conceal his ideas 



QUEVEDO. 109 

amidst filth and zanyism ; Cervantes begging his bread ; 
Fielding without a friend, Quevedo in a dungeon. Well 
may Johnson break forth into strong melancholy verse in 
his imitation of Juvenal ; well may he enumerate nothing 
but miseries, as he cries out — 

What various ills the scholars life assail, 
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. 

This incessant toil and thought beget little success ; then 
comes the pale envy and the biting cares ; then the degra- 
dation of seeking a patron ; and lastly, the sad end — the 
patron, and the jail. In the life which is before us we 
shall find these wayside marks precisely in the succession 
in which the noble verse of Johnson has placed them. 

The literature of the Spaniards is but imperfectly known 
to many Englishmen. A great name has overshadowed 
a host of inferior, but of excellent writers. Cervantes is 
popular and appreciated, but Calderon, Lope de Vega, 
Garcilasco, Ponce de Leon, and Quevedo, authors every 
one of them worthy of study, are known but by name. It 
is to the history and great work of the latter that we wish 
to direct attention. 

The era of Philip the Second of Spain resembled, in 
too many respects, our own. Catholicism and that shade 
worshipped by enthusiasts, monkish devotees, Catholic 
unity, were rampant. The question of the Immaculate 
Conception would, if then propounded, have been settled 
by a Bull. The Inquisition flourished in all its glory (?), 
and superstition and luxury went, as they always will and 



110 VARIA. 

do, hand in hand. The latter vice bore, perhaps, the largest 
flower, for it had been sown in rich ground, and the trea- 
sures of the conquered Indies, the pearls and gold of Mexico, 
and the silver of Peru, were poured like liquid manure to 
nourish its root. The throne of Spain was, at that time, 
the richest in the world, its court or courts the most luxu- 
rious and debauched. We say courts advisedly. It had one 
at Peru, another at Mexico, a third in Sicily, a fourth at 
Naples, and each viceroy tried to outvie his fellows in 
show, pomp, and bravery. The manners and morals of 
these courts had corrupted the old institutions of the de- 
scendants of the Cid. There were too much ease and 
luxury, too much gold, too much grandeur ; the country 
presented all those signs of decadence which M. Ledru 
Eollin had seen in England, and which M. de Mont- 
alembert has endeavoured to explain away. The nobles 
presented little but vanity, idleness, intrigue, love of pre- 
cedent, ceremony, and contempt for the feelings of the 
people. Moral sense was all but extinguished: riches 
alone were worshipped. The throne was merely the altar 
of an empty idol, of a monarchy weakened and buried in 
superstition, and covered by the contempt of all who were 
noble, good, or free. Favourites reigned, and the basest 
dispensed favours from the polluted but still worshipped 
" Fountain of Honour." 

Abroad, in the country, the same signs presented them- 
selves. The artisan was poor and degraded, the peasant 
crushed and ignorant, the money-lender flourishing and 
rich ; gamblers and speculators in plenty, the intriguer 



QUEVEDO. Ill 

sure of his fortune, tax-gatherers and farmers-general fat- 
tening on the gains of iniquity, the exchequer of the state 
beggared, the middle classes and lower aristocracy poverty 
stricken, and ready to sell their daughters — either through 
the Church or without her intervention — to him, not who 
loved them most, but who had the strongest arm or the 
longest purse. It is the old history of downfalls. Rome 
presented the same signs, and farther back Egypt and 
Assyria could, did we know all, tell the same story. 

But these signs are not beheld with perfect -placidity 
by all. However blind a government or a nation may be, 
there are those whose hearts are pure, and whose vision is 
keen ; those who would seek to stay her in her downward 
course. Unfortunately the mass is too blind and foolish, 
the people perish for lack of knowledge, the reins are in 
the hands of those who are desperate and wicked, and 
they who would check the mad career are mocked at like 
Lot, or deemed mad like Cassandra. Quevedo was one 
of these. 

The lives of men, such as he was, are often much more 
romantic than romance itself, so that the apothegm of 
Lord Byron, anent truth being strange, stranger than 
fiction, is completely verified. " If you wish for a ro- 
mance," cries a French editor of one of Quevedo's works, 
" you shall have one," — a romance, indeed, dramatic 
enough, but sad, deep, and strange as a tragedy by 
^Eschylus. 

Don Francisco Gomez de Quevedo of Villegas was born 
at Madrid in the year 1580. His family, which was, as 



112 VABIA. 

every Spaniard's is, illustrious in its descent, had been 
attached to the court, and its members had held several 
appointments. Both the parents of the future satirist 
died whilst he was young ; but his relative and guardian, 
Don Jerome de Villanueva, placed him in the university of 
Alcala, where he made rapid progress, making himself to 
be regarded as a perfect prodigy of learning; knowing 
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, and French. 
Nor were his studies ended here : he dipped — for to have 
mastered all these thoroughly is beyond mortal power — 
into the studies of theology, law, philosophy, the belles 
lettres, natural philosophy, and medicine, No wonder is it 
that his college was proud of him, and that the fondness of 
his admirers gifted him also with every accomplishment 
which could be possessed by the finest cavalier and gentle- 
man in the world. In history and biography, just as in the 
commencement of inartistic novels, we often find the writers 
carried away by an intense admiration of their heroes. 
The character of the admirable Crichton seems to suit 
every one. Thus our quaint little Quevedo, with a per- 
petually active brain, a malformation in his feet, which 
renders walking or any martial exercise painful to him, 
but with the pride of a high-born Spaniard, is not only 
represented as a learned philosopher, but as " an arbiter 
in disputed points of honour, preserving with the greatest 
delicacy the parties who consulted him from any compro- 
mise of character, highly accomplished in arms, and pos- 
sessing a courage and an address beyond that of the most 
skilful masters." Thus far M. de Sismondi, who does 



QUEVEDO. 113 

not forget an editorial flourish about "the sanguinary 
ordeal/' meaning, we presume, if he mean anything, that 
Quevedo was an accomplished duellist, and in addition 
to his other acquirements, knew the "punto reverso, 
the stocata," and all the practice and terms of an art 
which taught him to wield his long Spanish rapier, with 
its channelled blade, quite as skilfully as he did his 
pen. 

The reason for all this, which we cannot but regard as 
exaggeration, follows. The high souled little man, full 
of courage and chivalry, being a poet, and a Spaniard to 
boot, walking along the streets of Madrid, is attracted by 
the cries of a woman in distress. Rushing to the spot, he 
finds a lady struggling w T ith a burly cavalier ; he rescues 
her, draws his sword, has a few hurried passes, probably 
with one who knew but ill how to defend himself, and 
leaves the lady free, but his adversary, by an unlucky 
lunge, dead in those midnight streets of Madrid. Que- 
vedo, sheathing his bloody rapier, and bending down over 
the body, turns the dying man to the moonlight, and 
recognizes the face of one of the most powerful nobles of 
Spain. . One glance is enough for him. Henceforth, 
adieu the reputation of the scholar and the poet : welcome 
that of the duellist and brawler : he has killed his man, 
and must fly. With a strange pang at his heart, a deep 
regret, relieved perhaps a little by the thought that this 
misfortune arose in his defence of a lady, who will, we 
may be sure, hereafter defend his reputation, Quevedo 
gets him gone, and flies to Messina ; the Duke d'Ossuna, 



114 VARIA. 

whom he slightly knew, having been appointed Viceroy of 
Sicily, and holding grand court therein. 

To a man of wit, learning, and skill, this forced retire- 
ment was not so much a banishment as the beginning of 
his fortunes. The fame of Quevedo had preceded him ; 
and either at that court, remote from the capital, was 
preserved the ancient virtue of giving places to men who 
really could fill them, or the friendship of the Duke 
d'Ossuna prevailed, and Quevedo suddenly mounted into 
the seat of the secretary. The skill and wisdom of the 
man soon became apparent. He was, in a little space, 
the very right-hand of the Duke. He travelled from 
Genoa to Nice, from Nice to Venice, from Venice to 
Madrid, from Palermo to Rome, carrying on important 
negotiations, charged with dozens of state secrets, and 
with affairs of state, all of which he skilfully executed. 
His life, as the life of such a man in such a time naturally 
would be, was filled with adventures. At Nice, being in 
possession of a state secret, he suddenly freighted a ship 
and saved the family of his host, who had been proscribed 
by the Prince Charles Emanuel. At Venice he became 
not only a witness, but an actor, in that pretended con- 
spiracy against the senate which furnished our poet Otway 
with the plot of his tragedy, " Venice Preserved" His- 
tory has hitherto believed in the actual existence of the 
plot, not of the tragedy, but of the Spaniards against 
Venice ; but M. Guerra y Orbe has proved, from au- 
thentic sources, that the conspiracy only existed in the 
cunning brains of the Venetian senators. The truth seems 



QUEVEDO. 115 

to be that the seignory, doubting and mistrusting the 
influence which Spain was acquiring in her state affairs, 
imagined a cabal, found ready dupes, spies, and denoun- 
cers ; imprisoned in oubliettes, or assassinated, or cast into 
the sea, all to whom their secrets were known, kept amongst 
themselves a most profound silence, and left, in the face 
of Europe, Spain and the Duke d'Ossuna guilty of an 
abortive and odious conspiracy, thus rendering free their 
state from further foreign influence, and finding through- 
out the whole of Europe a generous and simple- credence, 
and in Fra Paolo a slavish and complaisant historian. 
Such is one of the curiosities of history which time and 
patient research bring to light ! But such is the power 
of genius over truth, that it is not more certain that Mac- 
beth will be judged from the pen of Shakespeare, and that 
Richard the Third will be ever regarded as a demi-devil 
rather than a skilful and humane governor, than that the 
sorrows of Belvidera and the woes of Jaffier and Pierre 
will draw innumerable tears from yet unborn audiences, 
and will, as heretofore, excite the hatred of the English 
against the pride and treachery of Spain. 

We may be assured that Quevedo, the chief secretary 
of the Duke d'Ossuna, shared in his disgrace. The secre- 
tary had to fly from Venice as a beggar. He reached 
Naples to find his master and friend, to aid, and at last to 
tire him with his good counsels, and to be dismissed. Not 
long afterwards d'Ossuna was disgraced himself, lost his 
vice-royalty, and died, perhaps, of pride and a broken heart. 
Olivarez succeeded him. 



116 VARIA. 

The good fortune of Quevedo, not less than his skill 
and genius, made him many enemies. He was besides 
more pleasing to the ladies of the court than he was hateful 
to the nobles. He somehow acquired the name of a man 
of gallantry. To be so in the sixteenth century, and in 
Spain, was to play a very dangerous game. The State 
of Venice paid many an assassin to track the clever secre- 
tary, and whether by land or by sea, the biographer of 
Quevedo assures us his life was in danger from the 
dagger of a bravo paid either by some jealous husband or 
some Italian lord : all these dangers the satirist escaped, 
survived the Duke d'Ossuna, and lived to refuse a proffered 
secretaryship from Olivarez. 

It is probable that these years, free from business and 
the intrigues of court, were the happiest which Quevedo 
boasted. He fell in love with a lady whose name was 
Esperanza, wrote poetry to her, playing gently and prettily 
on the signification of her name, was crowned with success, 
married, and, after a year of great happiness, lost, as he 
has told us, in admirable and affecting verses, his only 
" hope." This misfortune probably made him turn with 
more avidity than ever to that which had amused him in 
his prosperity. He published some of his poems, and 
wrote others. He must have done this largely and at 
leisure; for his poetical works fill three large volumes, 
and contain, besides other specimens, upwards of one 
thousand sonnets, some of them of great power and beauty. 
One of them cited by Sismondi, and we believe translated 
(in Bonn's edition) by Wiffen, the translator of Tasso/ will 
charm the reader by its sombre beauty. 



QUEVEDO. 117 

A Roma sepultada en sus ruinas. 
Buscas en Roma a Roma 6 peregrino ! &c. 



Stranger, 'tis vain ! midst Rome thou seek'st for Rome 
In vain ; thy foot is on her throne — her grave : 
Her walls are dust ; Time's conquering banners wave 

O'er all her hills ; hills which themselves entomb. 

Yea ! the proud Aventine is its own womb ; 
The royal Palatine is ruin's slave ; 
And medals, mouldering trophies of the brave, 

Mark but the triumphs of oblivious gloom. 
Tiber alone endures, whose ancient tide 
Worshipped the Queen of Cities on her throne, 

And now, as round her sepulchre, complains. 
Rome ! the stedfast grandeur of thy pride 
And beauty, all is fled ; and that alone 

Which seemed so fleet and fugitive remains! 

Few sonnets in any language, it seems to us, can sur- 
pass this in melancholy and reflective grandeur. 

Next to his sonnets the larger portion of poems which 
Quevedo has given us consists of what he calls "romances." 
They are, indeed, short stanzas, and resemble nothing in 
the English language, unless it be those biting verses of 
Swift on his own death, or the more playful melancholy 
and irony of Hood. He is very fond of subjecting his 
own fortune to the microscope, and he examines and turns 
it over with such quaint reflections, such good-humoured 
philosophy, that we cannot help at once loving and admiring 
the man. We shall shortly have to revert to one of these 
" romances:" at present, we must follow the history of 
the author. 

His pursuit of literature, which — such was the nature 



118 VARIA. 

of the man — could not but with him be very earnest, 
brought him into contact with many of the pseudo-litter- 
ateurs of the day. It has always been the fate of men of 
satiric genius to make enemies amongst their own craft, 
and, as Quevedo did not hesitate to attack and blame 
those who were ridiculous and vicious in their style, he 
soon had a host of enemies amongst the poets. A school 
had been formed about this time, that is, from 1615 to 
1621, the style of which was full of false sentiments, long 
words, and hyperbole. It seems to us to have been the 
prototype of that Delia Cruscan nonsense which Gifford 
in our fathers' days destroyed by his Baviad and Mseviad. 
Gongora and Marini were at the head of this regiment of 
false poets, and as in Spain when the Inquisition flourished 
it was no difficult thing to attack a man's faith, some 
ridiculous disputes about the patron saint of Spain were 
foisted into the quarrel; and Quevedo, attacked on all 
sides, succumbed to his enemies. An old inquisitor, 
Aliaga, the poet and painter Pacheco, and a "Gongorist" 
Montalvan, joined their forces, and between them manu- 
factured a book full of bitterness and scandal, purposing 
to bring to light the secret life of Quevedo, wherein they 
dub him a " heretic, a thief, a robber, a liar without faith, 
honesty, or character; a debauchee spotted over with 
vices." Many of these qualities have been imputed to 
Quevedo by his biographers, but it does not appear by 
what authority, if we except that of this slanderous book. 
The " thief" and " heretic " was, at the very time of this 
slander, meditating a noble and bold deed. The king- 



QUEVEDO. 119 

dom was exhausted, the treasury empty, national industry 
discouraged, the priests rampant, the king in a state of 
servitude, the favourites in full possession of every power 
they could wish, quietly pocketing the finances and fat- 
tening upon the falling state. Quevedo, with a simplicity 
which is naturally ever the concomitant of enthusiasm, 
believed in the king, and contrived to place under his 
plate at dinner a copy of verses, folded into the form of a 
petition, which revealed these crimes and suggested a 
remedy. These verses were without insolence or irony, 
perhaps without much polish or epigram, but earnest, 
truthful, and full of a biting simplicity. The style, the 
measure, the very boldness of the verses, proclaimed the 
author ; but it was to a woman that Quevedo owed his 
betrayal. A certain lady of the court, a Donna Margarita 
— " una astuta mujer y de las famosas de la corte " — 
informed Olivarez of the secret, and one cold winter's 
night in 1639, the Alguazils of the court seized Quevedo, 
deprived him of his papers, and for a second time in his 
life he found himself a prisoner. In the years 1620-21- 
22 he had, indeed, been confined to his estates, but this 
latter imprisonment was a thousand times more tyrannical 
and severe. He was declared to be the author of an 
atrocious libel against good morals and government ; was 
thrown into the dungeon of a convent, where a stream of 
water passed under his bed, producing a pernicious damp- 
ness and malaria. His estates were confiscated, and, 
during his imprisonment, he was reduced to subsist by 
common charity. 



120 VARIA. 

This was not all. Quevedo was old, nearly sixty years 
of age. The dampness and harsh treatment had the 
worst possible effect upon him. He fell dangerously ill ; 
but his enemies, wishing nothing so much as his death, 
denied him the " luxury " of a physician. His teeth 
rotted in his head ; his whole frame was full of aches and 
agues ; his flesh broke out into great sores : the imprisoned 
satirist cauterised these himself. 

When they whom he has offended get the better of a 
clever man, there is little or no question as to their treat- 
ment of him. He must expiate, before their dulness, the 
crime of his superior knowledge. He must work out his 
certain punishment. There is nothing so cruel as unmiti- 
gated stupidity when offended. It is not pleasant to dwell 
upon these things ; we must therefore leave Quevedo to 
his fate, and, whilst pitying the man, admire the constancy 
of the poet. True, poetic genius finds sermons in the stones 
and consolation in the walls of a jail. If, on account of its 
sensitive nature, it experiences more sorrow and trouble, 
and feels acutely trials which leave the callous man of the 
world scatheless, it also finds a precious jewel in adversity, 
and an ointment more healing than the balm of Gilead in 
the contemplation of its trials. The fable of the ancients 
has pourtrayed this very beautifully, and the laws of nature 
show us a poetic analogy. You may strike upon the 
stubborn oak, and the blow will produce no effect ; nay, 
if you cut into its heart the wound only remains dry and 
ghastly ; but if you wound the poplar, the nature of the 
tree is such that it will weep and distil its innermost 



QUEVEDO. 121 

juices, and by its own tears at once heal the wound and 
form a beautiful and precious gum. So it is with the 
satirist and humorous poet. Quevedo bemoans indeed his 
own hard fate, and Thomas Hood, whose manner sometimes 
reminds one of the Spaniard, comments upon his hard 
fortune, but both do it in such a merry brave style that 
their verses have become a consolation for thousands of 
others. In the 16th " Komance " of the book Thalia we 
find Quevedo exhibiting this manliness and courage very 
remarkably, and so finely that we shall do a benefit to the 
reader by quoting them : — 

. . . My planet has looked on 

With such a dark and scowling eye 

My fortune, if my ark were gone, 
Might lend my pen as black a dye. 

No lucky or unlucky turn 

Did ever fortune seem to play, 
But, ere I'd time to laugh or mourn, 

'Twas sure to turn another way. 

Ye childless great who want an heir, 
Leave all your vast domains to me, 

And Heaven will bless you with a fair, 
Alas, and numerous progeny. 

They bear my effigy about 

The village as a charm of power, 
If clothed, to bring the sunshine out, 

If naked, to bring down the shower. 

Should bravos chance to lie perdu 
To break some happy lover's head, 

I am their man, whilst he in view 
His beauty serenades in bed. 



122 VARIA. 

A loosened tile is sure to fall 

In contact with my head below 
Justus I doff my hat. 'Mong all 

The crowd a stone still lays me low. 

My doctor's remedies alone 

Ne'er reach the cause for which they're given, 
And if I ask my friends a loan, 

They wish the poet's soul in Heaven ! 

The poor man's eye amidst the crowd 

Still turns its asking looks on mine ; 
Jostled by all the rich and proud, 

No path is clear whate'er my line. 

Where'er I go I miss my way, 

I lose, still lose, at every game ; 
No friend I ever had would stay, 

No foe but still remained the same. 

I get no water out at sea, 

Nothing but water at my inn ; 
My pleasures, like my wine, must be 

Still mixed with that should NOT be in. 

This is the last specimen we shall give of Quevedo's 
numerous poems ; it is scarcely, indeed, as a poet that he 
is remembered : his sonnets are, as we have seen, some 
of them very noble, and are evidently the production of a 
noble soul. That of Quevedo had need to have been 
noble and constant too. He had smitten vice in high 
places ; his satire and the revelations of court life which 
he had given were not forgotten. He expiated that worst 
of crimes in a fallen age, the crime of wishing to make 
his country better, by an imprisonment of four years, 



QUEVEDO. 123 

every day of which was a martyrdom. He underwent 
this punishment with a never-failing bravery and con- 
stancy; he turned calmly to that consolation which is 
found above ; he wrote religious works, the " Life of the 
Apostle Paul/' and an " Introduction to a Eeligious 
Life ;" so, let us hope that both he, as well as others, 
could say that — 

. . . The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
Leads to the world where sorrow is unknowp. 

One of his religious treatises is curious. There is a trea- 
tise upon good and bad fortune by Seneca, ' De Eemediis 
utriusque Fortune,' which abounds in consolatory and phi- 
losophic views of life, views so pure and elevated, that it is 
with difficulty that one can believe them the work of any 
but a Christian. Quevedo translated this, and added an 
additional chapter to each, wherein it is easy to see that 
he is speaking to, and consoling himself rather than the 
reader in his misfortunes. These works are evidently the 
work of an earnest Christian ; yet we shall find that, earnest 
as he was, he hated priestcraft with a royal hate. 

At last the King of Spain died, and Olivarez, his ra- 
pacious minister, fell from power. The few friends of 
Quevedo pressed for an examination : it was granted, and 
the imprisonment was declared to be a mistake. The real 
author of the verses, which were attributed to Quevedo, 
was found to be a monk ! That is the way the Govern- 
ment accounted for their spite and injustice : the poor 
poet, broken in health but not in spirit, was set free. 



124 VARIA. 

Madrid was thenceforth hateful to him ; and, for peace 
and quietude for religious consolation and reflection, during 
the last few weeks of his life, Quevedo dragged himself to 
his little estate in the Sierra Morena, where his solitary 
dwelling, the tower of St. John the Abbot {Torre de Juan 
Ahad), stood, grim, weather-worn, and half-ruined. The 
old walls were of red stone, the construction itself Moorish, 
the windows broken and dilapidated, the court-yards over- 
grown with aloes, the walls of the little castle clothed with 
shrubs and verdure. His poetry, the source of all his 
woe and all his joys, did not forsake him in this last 
retreat. He drew between himself and his old tower a 
touching and evident comparison. He wandered, when 
he could find strength, about its ancient walks ; he him- 
self was but a ruin. He had been worsted in the struggle 
with his enemies, he was weak and paralysed, he had lost 
his left eye through the miasma of his prison, and he was 
nearly blinded. 

Dark ruined tower, my sad and last retreat, 

Where daily I mine own wrecked shadow greet ; 

Around me silence, in my heart the grave, 

No longer through my heart old passions rave ; 

Desire, love, regret, ambition cease 

Their constant babblings now. O leave but peace. 

Peace lights my soul and makes my heart serene, 

When thinking what I've felt and what I've seen. 

A poet once, I rivalled the gay birds ; 

But, oh ! I've shed more tears than uttered words ! 

These are said to be his last verses. He died a few 
days after writing them in his lonely tower of the Sierra 



QUEVEDO. 125 

Morena, on the 8th of September, 1645. " Apres tout/' 
cries his French biographer, " cette vie est complete ; on 
serait fache quelle se fut ecoulee autrement." 

Complete, indeed, but complete as the lives of too man y 
men of genius have been. Complete in suffering, in sorrow, 
in joy, in tears, in smiles. They run through the whole 
circle of thought, they experience the whole world of feeling, 
before they are permitted to purify themselves by trial, and 
to come, humbly, penitently, and quietly, to the throne of 
that great power, who has told us long, long ago, how 
futile and empty this world is, and has bidden us, too often 
without effect, to wean ourselves from it. 

The translation which we have in English of a few 
of the visions of Quev^edo is the only acquaintance, we 
believe, that the unlettered Englishman has with him, 
and that is scanty and incorrect. An incident in one 
of these visions is |noticed by Cowper in the following 
lines : — 

Quevedo, as he tells his sober tale, 

Asked, when in hell, to see the royal jail; 

Approved the method in all other things, 

"But where, good sir, do you confine your kings?" 

" There," said the guide, " the group is full in view." 

" Indeed," replied the sage, " there are but few." 

The sooty janitor the charge disdained. 

" Few, fellow ! There are all that ever reigned." 

Sir Roger L'Estrange, a man of very quick and vivid 
genius himself, and the first of that now illustrious body, 
" the gentlemen of the press," making literature his pro- 



126 VARIA. 

fession, was too anxious to get money from the booksellers 
to be very careful about his translation. Nevertheless, 
there is a free, nervous feeling, and perfect appreciation 
about his rendering which makes it capital reading. In 
the year 1715 it had passed through eleven editions, and 
was a popular work ; but, in reading it, you would scarcely 
know it to be a translation, for Sir Roger hath not only 
turned the words, but where he can, the ideas and places ; 
thus the Prado at Madrid becomes Pall Mall, the Spanish 
place of execution Tyburn, &c, but it loses none of the 
smartness of Quevedo. The manner in which the visions 
take place is much the same as in other works of the 
same nature. The author happens to see some priests dis- 
possess a man held by the devil : he holds converse with 
the devil, and afterwards falls asleep and dreams that he 
is in the infernal regions. • Of course therein he meets all 
sorts of persons : ladies of quality, kings, doctors, poets, 
fiddlers, tailors, judges, lawyers, scriveners, tradespeople, 
and pastrycooks. Curiously enough, he is very hard upon 
these poor pastrycooks, and he sends them quietly to their 
punishment in company " with a cook that was troubled 
in conscience for putting off cats for hares." The book 
is, in fact, a very humorous satire or invective against all 
trades and professions. No one escapes. Like Jacques, in 
" As You Like It," Quevedo cries : — 

Give me leave 
To speak my mind, and I will through and through 
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world — 
If they will patiently receive my medicine. 



QUEVEDO. 127 

Hallam has remarked that, although Quevedo was a 
various writer, he is now only remembered by his prose. 
" His visions and his life of the great Tacano were early 
translated, and they are better than anything in comic 
romance, except ' Don Quixote,' that has been produced 
in the 15th century. And yet this commendation is not 
a high one. In the picturesque style the life of the great 
Tacano is tolerably amusing, but Quevedo, like others, 
has long been surpassed. The Suenos, or visions, are 
better, they show spirit and sharpness, with some origi- 
nality of invention." This is but faint praise. Bouterwek 
speaks more highly. " Lucian," says he, " furnished him 
with the original idea of satirical visions ; but Quevedo's 
were the first of their kind in modern literature. Owing 
to frequent imitations their faults are no longer disguised 
with the charm of novelty, and even their merits have 
ceased to interest." 

The translation of the " Suenos" was undertaken in Eng- 
land by a " person of quality ;" under which title we always 
are led to suspect that some nameless bookseller's hack is 
at work. In this instance, however, the title is a true one. 
The person was one of certain quality, being no less than 
Sir Eoger L'Estrange, who, as Hallam says, takes great 
liberties with his text, and " endeavours to excel it in art 
by means of frequent interpolation." Without pausing 
to note the curious use of the word " excel " by Hallam, 
we may as well say that the words " made English," ap- 
plied to Sir Roger's translation, really mean all that they 
can be supposed to mean. One is no longer in Madrid, 



128 VABIA. 

but in London ; we hear of Gray's Inn and its pump, of 
the Temple, of the Exchange, Hide -Park, as he spells 
it, and Spring Gardens. This method adds vivacity and 
freshness to a somewhat sombre work, and it may be de- 
fended ; certainly the English reader gets thereby a more 
lively idea of the true spirit and scope of the " Visions." 
Of course as an actual translation this English work, which 
has been so often reprinted, must be regarded as a failure. 
" All the translations that I have seen are bad," writes 
Mr. Ticknor, " the best is that of L'Estrange, or at least 
the most spirited ; but still L'Estrange is not always faith- 
ful when he knew the meaning, and he is sometimes un- 
faithful from ignorance. Indeed the great popularity of 
his translations was probably owing in some degree to the 
additions he boldly made to his text, and the frequent 
accommodations he hazarded of its jests to the scandal and 
tastes of his times by allusions entirely local and English." 
This is no doubt true, and Mr. Ticknor has been very 
lenient to L'Estrange for the vast liberties which he has 
taken with his author; but he might have said more in 
praise of the masculine and nervous style. Sir Roger's 
English is very natural and colloquial, and better than 
many far deeper scholars could have written. Hence 
the translation reads pleasantly, and soon became popular. 
Here are specimens of it. The first extract is from the 
beginning of the book, " the Alguazil, or Catchpole, 
possest :" — 

" Going t'other Day to hear Mass at a Convent in this 
Town, the Door it seems was shut, and a World of People 



QUEVEDO. 129 

pressing and begging to get in. Upon Enquiry What 
the Matter was ; they told me of a Demoniac to be exor- 
cised ; (or dispossest) which made me put in for one, to 
see the Ceremony, though to little Purpose ; for when I 
had half smothered myself in the Throng, I was e'en glad 
to get out again, and bethink myself of my Lodging. 
Upon my way homeward, at the Street's- end, it was my 
fortune to meet a familiar Friend of mine of the same 
Convent, who told me as before. Taking notice of my 
Curiosity, he bad me follow him ; which I did, 'till with 
his Passe-par -tout, he brought me through a little back- 
door into the Church, and so into the Vestry : Where we 
saw a wretched kind of a dog-look'd Fellow, with a Tippet 
about his Neck, as ill-ordered as you'd wish ; his Cloaths 
all in tatters, his Hands bound behind him, roaring and 
tearing after a most hideous manner. Bless me, quoth I, 
(crossing my self) what have we here ? This (says the 
good Father who was to do the Feat) is a Man that's pos- 
sest with an Evil Spirit. Thais a Lye, (with respect of 
the Company, cryed the Devil that tormented him) for 
this is not a Man possest with a Devil, but a Devil possest 
with a Man ; and therefore you should do well to have a 
care what you say ; for it is most evident, both by the 
Question and Answer, that you are but a Company of 
Sots. You must understand, that we Devils, never enter 
into the Body of a Catchpole, but by force, and in spight of 
our Hearts ; and therefore to speak properly, you are to 
say, this is a Devil catchpoVd, and not a Catchpole bede- 
viVd. And, to give you your Due, you Men can deal 

K 



130 VARIA. 

better with us Devils, than with the Catchpoles ; for We 
flye from the Cross ; whereas They make use of it, for a 
Cloak for their Villany. 

" But though we differ thus in our Humours, we hold a 
very fair Correspondence in our Offices ; If ive draw Men 
into Judgment and Condemnation, so do the Catchpoles ; 
w& pray for an increase of Wickedness in the World, so 
do they ; nay and more zealously than we ; for they make 
a Livelihood of it, and we do it only for Company. And 
in this the Catchpoles are worse than the Devils; they 
prey upon their own Kind, and worry one another. For 
our parts, we are Angels still, though black ones, and 
were turn'd into Devils only for aspiring into an equality 
with our Maker : Whereas the very Corruption of Man- 
kind is the Generation of a Catchpole. So that, my good 
Father, your labour is but lost in plying this Wretch with 
Beliques ; for you may as soon redeem a Soul from Hell, 
as a Prey out of his Clutches. In fine, your Algouazils 
(or Catchpoles) and your Devils are both of an Order, only 
your Catchpole- Devils wear Shoes and Stockings, and we 
go barefoot, after the Fashion of this reverend Father ; 
and (to deal plainly) have a very hard time on't. 

" I was not a little surpriz'd to find the Devil so great 
a Sophister ; but all this notwithstanding, the Holy Man 
went on with his Exorcism, and to stop the Spirit's Mouth, 
washt his Face with a little Holy -Water ; which made 
the Demoniac ten times madder than before, and set him 
a yelping so horridly, that it deafened the Company, and 
made the very Ground under us to tremble. And now, 



QUEVEDO. 131 

says he, you may, perchance, imagine this Extravagance 
to be the Effect of your Holy -Water ; but let me tell 
you, that meer Water it self would have done the same 
Thing ; for your Catchpole hates nothing in this World 
like Water ; [especially that of a Gray's-Inn Pump.'] " 

Next follows a humorous discourse ridiculing the 
silly, useless, and profane way in which the name of the 
devil was and is used by many people wherewith to inter- 
lard their discourse. One perusal of the following should 
prevent any sensible man from repeating the offence : — 

" You must give over that Boguish way ye have got of 
abusing the Devils in your Shews, Pictures and Emblems : 
One while forsooth we are painted with Claws or Talons, 
like Eagles or Griffons. Another while we are drest up 
with Tails; and now and then ye shall see a Devil with 
a Coxcomb. JSTow I will not deny but some of us may 
indeed be very well taken for Hermits and Philosophers. 
If you can help us in this Point, do ; and we shall be 
ready to do ye one good Tarn for another. I was asking 
Michael Angelo here a while ago, why he drew the Devils 
in his great Piece of the Last Judgment, with so many 
Monkey Faces, and Jack-Pudding Postures. His Answer 
was, that he followed his Fancy, without any Malice in 
the World, for as then, he had never seen any Devils ; nor 
(indeed) did he believe that there were any ; but he has 
now learned the contrary to his cost. There's another 
thing too we take extreamly ill, which is, that in your 
ordinary Discourses, ye are out with your Purse presently 
to every Rascal, and calling of him Devil. As for Ex- 



132 VARIA. 

ample. Do you see how this Devil of a Taylor has spoiPd 
my Sute ? How the Devil has made me Wait ? How 
that Devil has couzen'd me, Sfc. Which is very ill done, 
and no small disparagement to our Quality, to be rank'd 
with Taylors : a Company of Slaves, that serve us only 
for Brushwood ; and they are fain to beg hard to be ad- 
mitted at all : Though I confess they have Possession on 
their sides, and Custom, which is another Law : Being in 
Possession of Theft, and stollen Goods ; they make much 
more Conscience of keeping your Stuffs than your Holy- 
days, grumbling and domineering at every turn, if they 
have not the same respect with the Children of the Family. 
Ye have another trick too, of giving every thing to the 
Devil, that displeases ye ; which we cannot but take very 
unkindly. The Devil take thee, says one : a goodly 
Present I warrant ye ; but the Devil has somewhat else 
to do, than to take and carry away all that's given him ; 
if they'll come of themselves, let them come and welcome. 
Another gives that Whelp of a Lacquey to the Devil ; but 
the Devil will have none of your Lacqueys, he thanks you 
for your Love ; a pack of Rogues that are commonly worse 
than Devils ; and to say the truth, they are good neither 
Rost nor Sodden. I give that Italian to the Devil, cryes 
a third ; thank you for nothing ; For ye shall have an 
Italian will chouse the Devil himself, and take him by the 
Nose like Mustard. Some again will be giving a Spaniard 
to the Devil ; but he has been so cruel wherever he has 
got footing, that we had rather have his room than his 
company." 



QUEVEDO. 133 

The vision " El Sneno de las Calaveras," which repre- 
sents the Last Judgment, has a certain kind of sublime 
grotesqueness about it which, alas, Sir Roger turns 
only into wilder and more awkward fun. It will not 
be policy, therefore, to follow his translation in the fol- 
lowing extract: — 

" I saw in my vision a very handsome youth towering 
in the air, and sounding a trumpet ; the severity of his 
face did however detract from his beauty. The very 
monuments and graves all obeyed this dreadful call. 
Scarcely had the trumpet sounded, when I perceived that 
those who had been soldiers and captains rising in great 
haste, for they thought they heard the signal for battle ; 
behold, too, the avaricious wretches woke in fear of being 
robbed ; and the epicures and idle received it as a call to 
dinner or the chase.* This was easily seen by the ex- 
pression of their countenances, and I perceived that the 
real object of the sound of the trumpet was not understood 
by any one. I afterwards saw souls flying from their 
former bodies, some in disgust, some in affright. To one 
body an arm was wanting, to another an eye. I could 
not forbear smiling at the diversity of the figures, and 
admiring that Providence which, amidst such a confusion 
of limbs, prevented any one from taking the arms or the 
legs of his neighbour. I observed only one burial ground 



* L' Estrange did not forget his Tory instincts. He translates 
this last clause, "the cavaliers and good fellows believed they had 
been going to a horse race or a hunting match." 



134 VARIA. 

where the dead seemed to be changing their heads ; and 
I saw a notary (L'Estrange calls this fellow a low attur- 
neye) whose soul was not in a satisfactory state and who, by 
way of excuse, pretended that it had been changed and 
was not his own. But what astonished me most was to 
see the bodies of two .or three tradesmen, who had so 
entangled their souls, that they had got their five senses 
at the end of their five fingers. When at last the whole 
congregation came to understand that this was the Day of 
Judgment, what a shifting and shuffling there was amongst 
the wicked." 

This vision, "El Sueno de las Calaveras," which 
L'Estrange makes the third, is in the " Obras Jocosas " 
the first ; it is dedicated to Count de Lemos, President of 
the Indies, to whom Cervantes had dedicated the second 
part of his Quijote, his Comedies, and other works. 
The few lines which follow will afford some specimen of 
the original : — " Y pasando tiempo (aunque fue breve), 
vi a los que habian sido soldados y capitanes levantarse de 
los sepulcros con ira, juzandola por sena de guerra : a los 
avarientos con ansias y congojas, recelando algun rebato : 
y los dados a vanidad y gula, con ser aspero el son, lo 
tuverion por cosa de sarao 6 caza. Esto conocia yo eu los 
semblantes de cada uno, y no vi que llegase el ruido de la 
trompeta a oreja, que se persuadiese a lo que era." 

In a smoother version and more faithful translation the 
real thought of the author and his deep manner of deal- 
ing with his subject is seen : — " Nevertheless, when all 
fairly comprehended, for there had before been doubt that 



QUEVEDO. 135 

this was the Day of Judgment, it was worth beholding 
how the voluptuous and lascivious tried to hinder their 
eyes from being found for them, so that they might not 
import into the cause witnesses against themselves, how 
the malicious avoided their own tongues, and how mur- 
derers and robbers seemed willing to run off their feet in 
getting out of the way of their own hands. And turning 
my head I saw a miser, who, having been embalmed, and 
his entrails left afar off, was quietly waiting till his bowels 
should arrive, whether, since the dead were to that day arise, 
certain money-bags of his were to rise also ? I had great 
inclination to laugh at this, but, on the other side of me 
I had to pity the extreme eagerness with which a great 
crowd of notaries and lawyers was rushing by, flying from 
their own ears, in order to escape hearing their own sen- 
tence; but none succeeded in this, except those who in 
this present world had had their ears cropped off as 
thieves ; but these, owing to the neglect of justice, were by 
no means in the majority." 

Here is satire that hits hard ; indeed the six undoubted 
Suenos of Quevedo are full, as Ticknor has said, of the most 
truculent sarcasm, " recklessly cast about by one to whom 
the world had not been a friend, nor the world's law." All 
that Quevedo has written indicates, but his Visions most 
especially, a bold, honest, earnest, and somewhat careless 
spirit. Those who know the world will not blame him 
even now ; he hated the falsity, the cruelty, the cowardice 
of society, and he spoke against it ; the difficulty for 
such a man in such an age would be not to write a satire. 



136 VARIA. 

We have seen that the Spanish world was not inclined to 
follow Quevedo's teachings. The corruption was too great 
for it to listen to him ; and for more than two centuries 
after his death the fate which he foretold, the decay which 
he would have prevented, the wretched weakness and in- 
testine quarrel, has come upon it. Let us, too, take heed 
lest place-hunting and corruption do not send the glory of 
England to whistle down the winds as they have done 
that of Spain, and let us welcome all such manly, whole- 
some satirists as Quevedo, taking their chastisements in 
good part, mending ourselves hy their directions, not cry- 
ing out upon their peevishness and ill-nature, being 
assured that they fulfil an important mission, and that the 
majority of them can say of their writings, as Quevedo did 
of his, — " He who rightly comprehends the morality of 
this discourse shall never repent the reading of it." 




MADAME J. M. B. DE LA MOTHE GUION 
AND QUIETISM. 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

L'Ame amante de son Dieu representee dans les emblemes de Hermanus 
Hugo sur ses pieux desirs, et dans ceux d'Othon Vcenius sur 
V Amour divin, avec des figures accompagnees de Vers. Cologne, 
1716. 

Moyen Court et tres-facile pour f aire Voraison, Lyon, 1688 et 1690. 

Recueil de Poesies Spirituelles. Amsterdam, 1689, 5 vols, in 8vo. 

Opuscules Spirituels, contenant le Moyen cour de faire Voraison, les 
Torrents Spirituels, etc, Cologne, 1704, in 12mo. 

Vie de M me Guyon, icrite par elle-meme (probably a composition by 
Poiret from material furnished from the Archbishopric of Paris). 
Cologne, 1720, 3 vol. 12mo. 

The Life of Lady Guion, written by herself in French, now 
abridged and translated into English, 8fc. §-c. Bristol, S. Farley, 
MDCCLXXII. 

A short and easy Method of Prayer. Translated from the French of 
Madame J. M. B. de la Mothe Guion, By Thomas Digby Brooke. 
London, MDCCLXXV. 

The Devout Christian, or the soul filled with the fullness of God. Being 
extracts from the works of Lady Guion, who for her pious writings 
suffered a series of cruel persecutions by the Romish Church in France 
in the \7th century. Brighton, 1847 ( ?). By Clericus ( ?). 

Life and Experience of Madame Guion. ByT. C. Upham. Sampson 
Low and Son, 1862. 



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MADAME J. M. B. DE LA MOTHE GUION 
AND QUIETISM, 

A.D. 1648—1717. 

|A Politique tiree de la Sainte Ecriture." 
A National Policy founded upon Scripture ! 
What a cry is here for a politico-religious 
party ! What an admirable solution for all 
external and internal differences ; that is to say, if men 
would first do two things, i. e. agree as to the kind of 
policy mapped out by Scripture, and then be of one mind 
in accepting it ! 

But, alas, although many admirable people have been 
ready for this beatified state, so far from realizing it are we 
that over all the world we seem to see, at the present 
time, little else but the triumph of Force. This is, at 
best, unpleasant to those ardent and hopeful souls who 
look forward to a reign of peace, gentleness, and love. 

Austria and Prussia, having gone against the whole 
sense of Europe, have killed, and have taken possession, 
divided the spoils, and now fight for them. Poland is held 



140 VABIA. 

down, and lies quiet enough, almost as if she were dead. 
The j who died in a great cause seem to have failed, and 
died in vain. In America the Union is restored and kept 
together by force, and the South is content to accept the 
result. The struggle over, the wise and good hail the 
abolition of slavery as worth its cost, and moderation in 
the hour of victory will cement the tie which binds the 
South to the North. In Italy the popular cause has 
triumphed, but the Papacy still keeps its ground, and 
Austria holds Venetia; and the only consolation which 
the lover of progress has may be summed up in that 
saving advice which the pupil of Gamaliel gave to the 
restless Christians of Thessalonica, " Study to be quiet, 
and to do your own business." 

In the political world — that great world, whose news- 
paper is history, and whose years are cycles, or at least 
lustrums — there is an ebb and flow in the tide of events. 
They flow rapidly enough at first, and then they cease, 
and rest. We have been going ahead pretty quickly, and 
the motion has made us somewhat giddy. The thousand 
years of peace which the saints are to enjoy before the 
other dead arise, seemed to some ardent souls to have 
commenced about fourteen years ago — in 1851, when the 
brotherhood of nations and the federation of the world 
had set in. The war-drum was to throb no longer ; there 
were some millions of swords ready to be beaten up into 
ploughshares, and as many guns to be made into steam- 
engines or cylindrical boilers. We saw nothing to fight 
with but Nature : waste lands were to be subdued, and 
deserts tamed. 



MADAME BE LA MO TEE GUIOK 141 

But, 1852 taught man that, when he thought he had 
tamed his heart, he counted without his host. There is 
much to be done yet before we reach Dr. Cumming's 
millennial rest. Russia, France, America, Prussia, and 
Austria, and, lastly, we may add, England, the last being 
certainly the most peaceable, are full of unquiet spirits, 
who are too ready to appeal to force, and who, when 
people talk of peace, make them ready for war. 

If you are on the right side of duty, perhaps it is as 
well to be shot out of life as to be cheated -out of it. 
Perhaps in the sight of God a foetid court in London or 
Liverpool, where vice always shoulders Poverty, and Death 
hob-a-nobs cheek by jowl with the two, is as sore an evil 
as is a battle-field, where a number of men, blinded by 
prejudice, and enlisted upon two opposite sides of a prin- 
ciple, blow each other to bits, and deface God's image by 
the thousand. War is not an unmitigated evil, although 
it is no doubt a very sore one. But life itself is a war ; 
and the most eloquent of the Apostles has taken up the 
whole armour, and told us indeed to be Soldiers having 
the shield of Faith, the breastplate of Righteousness, and 
the sword of the Spirit. 

Quietism, therefore, hardly holds a place with the 

earnestly active good man ; but there are many good men 

who are not very active. These are the men who seek 

to go out of the world ; who, with Cowper, sigh for — 

A lodge in some vast wilderness, 

Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumour of oppression and deceit, 
Of unsuccessful or successful war> 
Might never reach me more. 



142 VARIA. 

And, with Goldsmith's saddened and defeated ideal of him- 
self, are always ready to 

Quit the world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learn to fly. 

But it may be doubted whether any one of such men ever 
flew far enough ; you change the country, but not the 
mind. You may philosophise with silent Indians, eat 
with swinish Hottentots, mate with the lower natures 
anywhere, but you will not find peace. You may believe 
that when you are teaching a train of village children you 
will be away from deceit, and in the very atmosphere of 
innocence ; you may bask in a fancied quietness, and all 
the time the snake is crawling under the grass, and the 
viper gliding among the flowers. 

People with shaken nerves shiver at a noise ; but it is 
doubtful whether the publication of their quiet doctrines 
and the ventilation of their wishes do not excite the devil 
Obstinacy and Opposition to make more " row" than ever. 
It was said, with some truth, by the most vivid and bril- 
liant of our modern historians, that the deputation of the 
three Quakers to Russia, and the speeches of those emi- 
nently quarrelsome men, Messrs. C and B , did 

more to plunge us into the disastrous and foolish Russian 

war than anything else. As for Mr. B , we know 

how he looked upon war in America, and the whole of his 
life has been one state of war. We all admire his eloquent 
tongue, but we know very well that it has blown up as 
many fierce tongue battles and contests as any battle 
trumpet in the world. Mr. B is therefore no quietist, 



MADAME BE LA MOTHE GUION. 143 

and probably confesses to himself that little fact at least. 
Nor is Quietism consistent with a political life. To be up 
and doing, to trust in one's own labour, not to lie down 
and wait for what will turn up; to be up early and at 
plough while others sleep ; to look ahead and get before 
others in the race ; to fight fairly but earnestly, and to 
take our own part in everything; these are the ways of 
the anti-quietist and generally bustling and successful 
man. 

Certainly quietism does not fare well in the world : 
activity and continual labour are much better ; and per- 
haps the blessing of God follows these last as well as the 
first. For, if logically carried out, it seems that the good 
would not find their ways very pleasant, but would be 
surrounded by the wicked, like gaping bulls and wolves, 
to which King David, drawing his images from his shep- 
herd's life, likens them. Is quietism the right thing then 
in religion? Ought we always to suffer all we can, to 
submit to all we can, and not to resist wickedness ? 

This perhaps is the most important part of the question. 
God is so great, and the world is to many, if not all, so 
full of mystery, of trial, trouble, and perturbation, that they 
would try to leave it as much as they can, and creep into 
some lonely corner to die. But surely such a feeling is 
morbid and wrong. Although we see it exhibited in 
many excellent men, yet it is in those men who are so 
physically weak that their weakness amounts to disease. 
" I was a wounded stag who left the herd," says Cowper, 
plaintively; but then this "wounded stag" was so bash- 



144 VABIA. 

fill, and of so retiring a nature, that he dared not read 
aloud the minutes of the House of Commons, which his 
duty as clerk therein required him to do. And when we 
retire from the world, not, as many dull people say, from 
God's world, the material earth, which is beautiful, but 
from man's world, which is base, do we not soon begin to 
despise and hate man? " God made the country, and 
man made the town," wrote the same poet. God is grand, 
man is vile, say other quietists, always placing God in 
opposition to Man, His chief work. But all this is false. 
Unless we love man, whom we have seen, how can we love 
God, whom we have not seen ? Man made the country 
out of the materials which God gave him. The smiling 
fields of harvest, the decent hedge-rows, the pretty gar- 
dens, the wheat in the ear, the bearded barley, the green 
rank-leaved turnip, the waving grass, the vetch and sain- 
foin ; the sturdy oak, the clinging vine, and the bride- 
groom elm, around which it clings, are planted and raised 
into beauty by man. Nay, the country — a vast, wild 
desert, but for man — derives its chief beauty from the 
contrasting crowded cities. Strong natures love cities 
and crowds and the bustle of life ; weak natures shun 
them. Milton, who is, to say the least, as truly religious 
a poet as Cowper, presents a fine contrast to his weakness, 
when he declares that, far from fleeing to the country — 

Tower'd cities please us then, 

And the busy hum of men, 

Where throngs of knights and barons bold, 

In weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, 

With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 

Rain influence, and judge the prize. 



MADAME BE LA MOTHE GUION. 145 

And yet, with melancholy, soft natures, there will always 
be a determined love for quietism. Perhaps civilization 
will increase this, just as among the high-bred and mild 
Hindoos, contemplative, not active, religion is the aim and 
end of life. Is not a man who does nothing free from 
blame ? Can we do better than present ourselves spotless 
to God ? How shall we do better than think of Him and 
His works for ever ? Such may be their questions, and 
to them we often return, for they involve the whole spirit 
of Quietism — they will solve all our doubts whether war 
is lawful ; whether England may resist the bullyings of a 
triumphant and a braggart rival or enemy; whether a 
Christian man may carry arms ; and whether one who 
would lead the gentle life might dare to shoot a burglar, 
or call in a policeman to a pickpocket. 

These queries, and others which will arise out of this 
portion of the subject, may be answered by the life of the 
great modern saint of Quietism, Madame Guion, a woman 
of very noble family, and a contemplative religious poetess, 
whose hymns many of our people now sing; for very 
beautiful they are, and beautifully have they been trans- 
lated by William Cowper. 

The name Quietism was given to the doctrines which 
this lady enunciated, and upon which she insisted, because 
the chief point of religion, she asserted, was to be quiet. 
She carried this out considerably further than many 
people would think. The chief duty of man, says a writer, 
" was, according to Madame Guion, to be wrapped up in 
the continual contemplation and love of God, so as to 



146 VARIA. 

become totally independent of outward circumstances and 
of the influence of the senses ; and Quietists contended 
that when a man had arrived at this state of perfection, the 
soul had no further occasion for prayer and other external 
devotional practices. Quietism is, in fact, the extreme of 
asceticism mixed with contemplative devotion." As such 
very many souls have felt an impulse to it. When Cole- 
ridge had enlisted as " John Comberbatch " in a dragoon 
regiment, and made no doubt an awkward sort of fellow in 
the awkward squad, his religious thoughts took much 
such a turn as this. " From the All-seeing and All- 
knowing God," he said, " aught to desire were impotence 
of mind;" that is, in Coleridge's then idea, all we had to 
do was to sit down and wait. The expression of desire, or 
prayer, was perfectly nonsensical, if desire itself were im- 
potence of mind. With the Mohammedans and the Brah- 
mins such men not only exist, but take their place, a chief 
place, in religion. The Turk has his Kismet, and lets 
the cholera march over him : so too many of our village 
Methodists were violent against dear, simple, observing 
Dr. Jenner, and condemned him as a wicked man because 
he prevented the small-pox, and, as they said, interfered 
with what they believed was the will of God. 

The Church of Rome has on her garment (which, as 
she boasts, is without a rent or seam) a good many patches 
of the queerest colours. Every member believes the same 
thing ; but not having the liberty of Christ, and being still 
under the law, everybody adds something to the belief of 
his neighbour. This did Michael Molinos, a Spanish 



MADAME DE LA MOT HE GUION. 147 

monk, in the seventeenth century, who, in addition to 
being a good Catholic, embodied quietism in his works, and 
for it got condemned at Rome, nay, and put into prison, 
where he died (1696), having for many years been fur- 
nished by his Church with a contemplative retreat. 

But what the monk had let fall Madame Guion took 
up, and with her, many ladies of rank, many pious people, 
let us hope, in a corrupt court. Among them was Madame 
de Maintenon, and good Abbe de Fenelon. Madame 
Guion, who was a young widow with three children, must 
have been able to work great things on others by sym- 
pathy, for all near her fell into her crotchets. Her 
director, the Father Lacombe, shared her ideas. He 
wrote a work, The Analysis of Mental Devotion, in which 
the strongest quietist views were put forward. Kneeling 
was no use in his views ; confession, prayer, were to be 
done away with. Madame Guion, Quietist as she was, 
endeavoured to introduce her system into various convents ; 
but the bishops very properly told her to leave off meddling 
with their flocks. What ! disuse kneeling, bowing, cross- 
ing oneself, prostration, fasting, and all forms? Monks 
and priests were alarmed, and contended, rightly enough, 
that " it was impossible to keep up the external warmth 
of piety without prayer ;" and that " a perpetual state of 
contemplation was impossible." 

On the other hand, Madame Guion had insisted, and 
with truth, that, without internal prayer, all praying with 
the lips was useless. She published a book, "Moyen 
court et tres facile de faire Oraison" (A Short and Easy 



148 VAR1A. 

Method of Praying) ; and this book very nearly revolu- 
tionized religious society, and brought about a serious 
conflict between two great lights of the Gallican church, 
Bossuet and Fenelon. 

Madame Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de la Mothe Guion 
was born at Montargis, 13th April, 1648, and died on the 
9th June, 1717. Her father, a maitre des requetes, was 
of a family for many years noted for its severe religion ; 
and his little girl, who became so celebrated, seems at a 
very early age to have shown that she inherited the fa- 
mily proclivity to austere devotion. " My parents," she 
says, " made a very high profession of piety, especially 
my father, for in his family they reckoned almost as many 
saints as persons who composed it." 

Like that of Montaigne, who was, if we are to credit 
him, an eleven months' child, there was something very 
peculiar about Madame Guion's birth. " I was born before 
due time ; for my mother, having received a terrible fright, 
was delivered of me on the eighth month ; at which time 
they say 'tis almost impossible for a baby to live." She 
herself nearly proved the truth of the saying ; her father 
ran for a priest, and when he came back found the poor 
baby without a sign of life, " with only an expiring sigh." 
So the priest and the father returned in the greatest dis- 
tress, and the little future saint very nearly died without 
being baptized. " Had I died then, O my God ! " she 
writes with an ecstatic piety, " I had never known thee. 
These alternatives of death and life were sign-omens of 
what was afterwards to befall me ; one while dying by ski, 



MADAME BE LA MOT HE GUION. 149 

another while living by grace. Death and life had a com- 
bat, but life was victorious. Oh, might I hope that in the 
conclusion life will be victorious over death ! Doubtless 
it will be so, if thou live alone in me, oh my God, who 
art at present my only life and my only love ! " 

The translator of the English " Life of Lady Guion," 
who has addressed his work to " Britons and Protestants," 
is very much alarmed because he imagines they will cry 
out against him, a What ! the life of a Papist, and a Po- 
pish woman too ; away with it." But the fact is poor 
Madame Guion has very little of the Scarlet Woman in 
her. Her piety is so true, so fresh, fervent and beautiful ; 
or, to worldly people, so weak, silly, and overpowering, that 
we can well understand why the Protestant Cowper trans- 
lated her hymns, and why Wesley and Whitefield upheld 
her works and her life of singular purity and austere de- 
votion. I am not saying that this life was the model life, 
the best possible life, or anything like it, but I do say that 
it has in it something very courageous, singularly touch- 
ing, and beautifully devotional, and that in its determina- 
tion to give up every moment, every thought, every feeling 
to the Supreme Being, it is much more easily sneered at 
than imitated. Moreover, had Madame Guion been born 
in a Protestant country, or in the Anglican Church, her 
piety would have borne more useful fruit, although her 
devotion could not have been more sincere. 

The effect of some centuries of Boniish piety in the 
little girl was curious. Weak enough in body she was 
indeed. Yet hardly fully alive, an imposthume, she says, 



150 VARIA. 

was discovered in the lower part of her back, and this was 
cut out, leaving a wound of " prodigious size, so that the 
surgeon could put the whole of his hand in it." Poor 
baby ; " out of such frightful corruption/' she writes, " it 
pleased thee to raise me, oh my Saviour." Freed from 
this strange malady, " I was seized with a gangrene first 
on one thigh and then on the other. Truly my life seemed 
hardly anything else but a series of maladies." When a 
mere child she had a terrible vision of hell, which frightened 
her so much that she would go to confess ; but she was so 
small that the mistress of the boarders — she was in an 
Ursuline convent — went with her, and then the poor child 
accused herself of having thoughts contrary to the Faith ! 
The good confessor, smiling, asked her what they were, 
and the little baby, she was about four years old then, told 
him that " I had doubted of hell, but since then I had 
seen it, and I now doubted of it no longer." 

A very pretty picture this calls up to us, illustrative too 
of every- day life in the Church of Rome. We can fancy 
the thin, pale, weird face of the child saint, worn with 
bodily and mental illness, the bending sister of the Ursulines 
expressing wonder at the child, and conveying at the same 
time much respect to the father confessor ; and, too, the 
quiet smile of the good father, a gentleman perhaps touched 
with the Laodicean tendencies of the age, and who won- 
dered as he looked down at the girl at the curious effect 
of early piety and asceticism. Another picture of an oc- 
currence which took place a little before this might also 
be made. It is of the visit of Henry IV. to the nuns of 



MADAME BE LA MOTHE GUION. 151 

Port Boyal, when Mother Angelique, aged about seven 
years and wearing shoes six inches thick to make her look 
a little taller, toddled out to meet his jovial majesty, with 
her crozier and all the insignia of her rank. No wonder 
that the king kissed his hand to the little abbess, and 
declared that in his prayers he would remember Mother 
Angelique. 

At four years of age, then, she had been introduced to 
the Benedictines by the Duchess of Montbazon, a relative 
of her father's, who was pleased to see her in the habit of 
" a little nun," and where the little nun loved to sing the 
praises of God. One loves to linger over these early 
scenes ; soon after the vision and confession the child 
desired martyrdom, and the young rionettes were not un- 
willing (in fun) to indulge her. " The girls set me on 
my knees, on a cloth that was spread, and lifted up a 
great cutlass behind me. But I suddenly cried out that 
I was not at liberty to die without my father's consent. 
They said then that I should be no martyr, and that I 
had only made that excuse to free myself from it. And 
indeed it was true ! However, I was afterwards much 
afflicted. My consolation left me, and something re- 
proached me that I wanted courage to go immediately to 
heaven." But saint as she was at that age, and saint as 
her father was, the world appears to have entered that 
convent. She does not remember that she did anything 
amiss " except saying a number of petty pretty little things 
to divert those about her," — poor baby ! But afterwards 
she contracted pernicious habits. " One day my father 



152 VARIA. 

caught me at play with some children in the street, in 
a way as ill suited my rank and quality ! So much was he 
moved at the sight, as he tenderly loved me, that without 
saying a word to anybody he took me to the Ursulines" 
The little thing was then nearly seven years of age. 

When nearly eight years of age, she met at her father's 
house the Queen of England, Henrietta Maria, who, upon 
a hint given, had some diversion with the child, asking 
her many religious questions. The Queen was so pleased 
that she begged that she might take the child away with 
her as a small maid of honour; but her father resisted this 
request, and very luckily, as Madame thought, for her 
too. When a month or so older the little girl found out 
in the garden a small chapel dedicated to the child Jesus 
— this dwarfing of the Man-Christ is the cause of half, if 
not all the Eomish follies — and betook herself thither for 
devotion ; for some time she used to carry her breakfast 
there every morning, and hide it all behind his image, 
" for I was so much a child then," she adds, or her auto- 
biographer for her, " that I thought I made a considerable 
sacrifice in depriving myself of it." After this she fell 
into a cesspool, over which some bigger girls had been 
dancing, it being covered with boards. " When the girls 
retired I wanted to imitate them ; but the boards broke 
under me and I fell into a frightful goute, yet hanging 
by a little bit of timber in such a manner as I was plunged 
in the filth without being stifled by it ; a figure of the in- 
ward state I had to undergo, when in the horrible pit, 
which I was unable of myself to get out of." 



MADAME BE LA MOTHE GUION. 153 

The little bit of stick whereon, so far as one can make 
out, the little girl was caught and sat, was to her as a pro- 
vidential intervention ; and lucky is it that it was so, for 
the boarders, in true girlish fashion, never tried to help 
their little sister, but ran shrieking to alarm the sisters of 
the house : and these nuns of course, in the manner of 
single women, concluded that the little nun was killed, 
and, instead of seeing whether the life of their poor little 
friend was extinct in a cesspool, ran to tell Jeanne's sister, 
who was then at church and at prayers. One might now 
naturally expect that the sister would hurry to the poor 
child ; but she did no such thing. " She immediately 
prayed for me, and (after having invoked the blessed Vir- 
gin) came to me in a half dead state ; but was not a little 
surprised when she saw me, in the mire and filth, seated 
as on an easy chair." Who can doubt of the earnestness 
of faith in people who prefer putting up a prayer to the 
Virgin to pulling out with an arm of flesh a poor child who 
is being stifled in the filth and ordure of a cesspool ! But, 
alas ! the little child herself had something that was not 
faith, although it was of it. Not only did she serve the 
poor as her Lord and Master did, but she wrote the name 
of Jesus on a piece of parchment, and with ribbons and a 
big needle fastened it to her skin in four places, and there 
it remained for a long time. 

Constant to herself the young lady through many per- 
turbations remained. But one must hasten on. She was 
little more than fifteen years of age when married to M. 
Jaques Guion, the son of that entrepreneur who made the 



154 VARIA. 

canal of Briace. She lets us know that she was of more 
noble a family than her husband, and that her family lived 
in greater style. Saint as she was, she was not displeased 
with the idea of marriage, although her father and mother, 
after the method of their country, made her sign the mar- 
riage articles without letting her know what they were. 
But she was " well pleased with the thoughts of marriage, 
flattering myself with the hopes of being thereby set at 
full liberty, and delivered from the impious and rough 
treatment of my mother, which I drew on myself from 
my want of docility." Her husband, who was thirty- 
eight years old, seems to have been a very good man, and 
to have shielded her from the tyranny of a mother-in-law 
and her henchwoman, who evidently looked upon too much 
piety as rather disagreeable. The battles between Saint 
Guion and the henchwoman are, when we recollect that 
the thorn in the sides of our wives and female-saints is 
now-a-days just the same, i.e. the ancilla, are amusing. 
Here are some hints of them : — 

Chapter xvi. Her waiting-maid endeavours to pre- 
vent her going to worship ! 

xxiv. Great insolence of her waiting-maid. 

xxvi. In the absence of her mother-in-law she turns 
her waiting -maid out of doors. 

xxx. Her mother-in-law's great affection for her — 
not the maid, but Saint Guion. — After her departure 
she (la belle mere) dies of grief ! 

By her husband, who lived with her for twelve years, 
Madame Guion had five children, of whom three only 



MADAME BE LA MOTHE GUION. 155 

survived. When she lay in of her second daughter, 
afterwards Corntesse de Vaux, and then Duchesse de 
Sully, her husband died. In 1780, Madame Guion quitted 
her mother-in-law and set out for Paris, having upon her 
a strong fit of religious devotion, which enabled her no 
doubt to look with an almost worldly coolness upon the 
death of her mother-in-law. 

It is but justice to say that, although Madame Guion 
often seems to complain of her want of " chastity towards 
God," and evidently considered after the pernicious ideas 
which celibacy must implant, that marriage was rather 
sinful than otherwise, she was a good and amiable wife. 
Her husband was a man of honour and very fond of her. 
When he heard that his mother had been cross with her 
he fell into a great rage, and his little wife once thought 
of cutting oat Tier own tongue so as not to irritate him. 
This is her dictum ; let good wives take heed of it : — 

" Most men have their passions, and it is the duty of a 
reasonable woman to bear them peaceably without irri- 
tating them more by cross replies." 

The great turning-point of woman's devotion is, how- 
ever, generally afforded by one of the opposite sex, and in 
this case it was the Pere Lacombe, an austere man, " aussi 
ardent dans la devotion qu'il avait ete pour les plaisirs dans 
sa jeunesse," * met her and became her director. To 
him she communicated all her reveries, how she had seen 



* M. L. Louvel, Nouvelle Biographie Universelle, Vol. 22, Article 
Guvon. 



156 VABIA. 

the devil in a vision ; how, when she rose to pray, Beel- 
zebub, or Apollyon, or some smaller fiend, pulled away the 
sheets and tumbled the bed. These visions were very 
much like those of Luther, against whom the Eomanists 
cry out. He, we know, at Erfurt, launched an inkstand 
at the head of the devil, who annoyed him a-cracking 
nuts.* One priest at least believed in Madame Gruion, 
and that was her director. He listened with attention, 
nay, with fervour, and his disciple became his teacher, 
whilst he filled her with an inner strength. " Dieu," she 
says, " m'a fait la grace de m'obombrer par le Pere La- 
combe." She was indeed overshadowed by the grace of 
her confessor, but she in her turn had a distinct influence 
on Father Lacombe. Three generations of an extraordi- 
nary piety, a childhood spent in a mystical and, as it 
seems to us, too often an empirical devotion, had already 
produced an effect permanent and ineffaceable upon the 
mind of Jeanne -Marie Bouviers. She who had at the age 
of four years desired a small martyrdom, who had through 
her whole life given such proof of her ecstatic devotion, 
needed not to have been overshadowed by Father La- 
combe to take unto herself the place of a prophetess of a 
new sect — a place which she had been enthusiastically 
sighing for all her life. 

We must also look back to the early and, through her 
own fault, unhappy marriage of this young saint, to explain 
that curious bias towards worldly or fleshly sensuousness 



* On this story Coleridge in his Friend has some excellent re- 
marks. 



MADAME DE LA MOT HE GUI ON. 157 

which is shown in her writings. In the best models of 
Christian fervour, eloquence, and even rapture, in Chrysos- 
tom, Jeremy Taylor, in Massillon and Bossuet, or, to go at 
once to the fountain-head, in the writings of the Apostles 
we find no approach to these sexual similitudes, and, as 
many believe, almost errotic wanderings which we too often 
gather from the writings of Romish saints, and which 
Sydney Smith found and commented on in those of Pro- 
testant Methodists. Why should Madame Guion have 
tried the difficult task of expounding the Canticles ? Why 
should she have lingered with distressing fondness over- 
such passages as this : — 

" Osculetur me osculo oris sui : quia meliora sunt 
ubera tui vino ? Cant. c. i. v. i." 

It is quite true that the verse may portray the mystic 
longing of the Spouse for Ins bride the Church; but it is 
equally true that the passage might have been written — 
and indeed has been written — by Hafiz, or any other of 
the amorous poets of Persia. We can understand why 
Father Tartuffe, in Moliere's comedy, should, with his 
peculiar feelings, wish to express himself mystically ; nor, 
to say the truth, can we Anglicans quite admire a young 
widow lady who could pen such prayer-raptures as the 
following : — 

" L'Union Essentielle, et le baiser de la louche, est 
le mariage spirituel, ou il y a union d'essence a essence, 
et communication de substances ou Dieu prend Fame pour 
son epouse, et se l'unit, <fcc. 

" Alors c'est le baiser de la bouche et la possession reele 
et parfaite. C'est une jouissance, qui n'est point sterile, 



158 VARIA. 

ni infructueuse ; puis qu'elle ne s'entend a rien moins 
qu'a la communication du Verbe de Dieu a Fame." 

At another point she adds, " Toutes ses unions sont 
embrassemens divins;" and she uniformly italicises her most 
ardent words. But all these raptures were to be gained 
by silent prayer. One was not to even try to articulate a 
word, but to remain as quiet as a Brahmin who perpetually 
squints in a holy rapture at the end of his nose ! No 
wonder that there was soon a division in the camp of the 
Quietists, almost as soon as the sect, if one can so call it, 
had been established. There was a true as well as a false 
method, and many, her biographers tell us, objected, "sans 
fondement," to pure passivity or Quietism. How Madame 
Guion could make her passivity agree with the raptures 
of the Song of Songs, one can hardly say at this time. 
In verse 14, which I will print in Madame Guion's own 
language, there are expressions which find much favour in 
her eyes. 

" Que vous etes belle, ma bien aimee ; que vous etes 
belles ! vous yeux resemblent ceux des colombes."* 

And a very pretty verse it is ; the simile has been used 
for ages, and descended, in all its freshness, to Beranger 
and Paul Dupont. But Madame Guion reads the matter 
with great innocence, and says that this dove-like simpli- 
city is the surest mark of the advancement of a soul ; for 
using neither turnings nor artifice, it is led in the straight 
path by the Spirit of God."f Surely one hardly needed 



* Le Cantique des Cantiques, c. i. v. 14. 

f Opuscules Spirituels de Mad. Guy on, p. 379. 



MADAME BE LA MOTHE GUION. 159 

this gloss from the pen of a lady saint. Of other verses, 
such as the sixth of the second chapter, " Lseva ejus sub 
capite meo, et dextra illius amplexabitur me." She remarks, 
" Ceci est tres-reel, et sera avoiie de toutes les personnes 
d'experience." She might surely have left these curious 
eastern poems alone and have contented herself with a sin- 
cere acceptance of the mystic interpretation put upon them 
by her Church. In short, a profounder respect for St. 
Paul's last adjuration to the Thessalonians, " Study to be 
quiet, and mind your own business," would perhaps have 
spared us Madame Guion and Quietism as well. 

In the court of the French king there can be no wonder 
that such doctrines spread like wildfire. To remain in a 
rapt state must have been a novelty as well as a rest to 
the Maintenon and her court. Inward silence, says Ma- 
dame, is absolutely indispensable, because the Word is 
essential and eternal, and necessarily requires dispositions 
in the soul in some degree correspondent to his nature. 
The Quietism of Guion became a fashion, people dressed 
like devotees and went to prayers instead of to plays, psalms 
were sung in the place of love-songs, and with the greater 
zest because these psalms very often were possessed of a 
double entendre even more passionate than the love-song 
itself. 

If any observer and prayer will look, in the calm lights 
of mild philosophy, upon the following verses of Madame 
Guion, he will no doubt not only become alarmed for the 
writer's sanity, but imagine that Guion has anticipated 
Beranger and others in celebrating the beauties of some 
earthly goddess, and the ardour which those beauties in- 



160 VARIA. 

spire. The accompanying illustration by Otho Vcenius is 
curious ; a Cupid with the wings and quiver of Eros him- 
self, hut with the nimbus of the Saviour, offers to a female 
child of about the same size a vase to smell. The motto is 
" Jucundum spirat odorem," and the verses on the theme 
as follows: — 

II repand une odeur charmante. 

Ah tirez-moi ! mon Dieu, mon unique esp6rance, 

Par vos parf urns si pr6cieux : 
Deja je me sentois tomber en deYaillance, 

Mais ce baume delicieux, 
Fortifiant mon cceur, lui donne le courage 
De courir apres vous, d'y courir en tous lieux : 
* * * * * 

Retirez-vous, douceurs, plaisirs, faveurs, caresses ; 

Dieu ! c'est vous seul que je veux, 
Vous etes tout mon bien, ma force, ma richesses, 

Vous seul pouvez me rendre heureux. 
Je sens que ce parfum est d'un force extreme. 

In another version she adopts the very language of the 
Canticles : — 

L'odeur de tes parfums, si ravissans, si doux, 
Enlevera les cceurs de ces vierges pudiques. 

The English tongue is too manly for this eastern imagery of 
love. It is better in Latin or in French : " Fulcite me 
floribus, stipate me malis : quia amore langueo." " Fortifiez 
moi avec des pommes: parceque je languis d'amour." 
This seems to us hardly the language of prayer to a jealous 
God. The Guion breaks out yet more warmly : — 

Ne m'abandonnez pas, mes Sceurs, 
Environnez-moi de ces pommes 



MADAME DE LA MOT HE GUION. 161 

Qu'on trouve au jardin de l'Epoux, 
Ah ! cachez-moi de tous les hommes ; 
Et que je sois seule avec vous. 

It must be confessed that this ecstatic poetry treads 
very closely on the heels of the amorous productions of 
the profanest of worldly minstrels. 

No doubt there was much good to the dreamer and the 
ecstatic visionary in her book ; and, if taken in the simple 
sense, it might have benefited all ; but as it was, it was 
calculated to do evil. The Church of Rome is more 
active than our own ; and the great Bossuet publicly 
condemned Guion's book, and (1695) imprisoned her In 
a convent ; there he compelled her to explain away her 
chief passages, which she readily did. Let out of the 
convent, the Archbishop of Paris confined her in the Bas- 
tille, and condemned her books as containing " a mon- 
strous and diabolical system." Fenelon defended her, and 
himself was condemned by Rome (1699); and it may be 
after all that Rome was right. 

What Guion felt right for herself was wrong and 
foolish as a system. What is required to carry on God's 
world is not the sluggish inactivity of the cocoon or the 
sloth. We want the patience (suffering) of the saint, but 
the activity of the hero joined with it. Contemplation is 
necessary and good ; but too much of it defeats its own 
end. Perhaps one of the most instructive things about 
this amiable but lazy type of religionists is the fact that 
they have been before condemned, in anticipation, by the 
Founder of the Gentlest Faith of all, in the parable of the 



162 VARIA. 

Talents. The man who did not waste, spend, destroy, 
nor soil his talent, hid it, free from rust and damp, in a 
napkin, and laid it in the earth, because he knew he had a 
taskmaster who reaped that which he had not sown, and 
took that up which he had not laid down. We know what 
condemnation followed on this man, who in one sense may 
be called a Hebrew Quietist. 




AUEEOLUS PHILIPPUS THEOPHRASTUS 

PARACELSUS, BOMBAST OF 

HOHENHEIM. 



^m^ 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

A. Theophrasti Paracelsi de Presagiis, Vaticiniis, et Divinationibus. 
Stronomica item Astrologica fragmenta lectu jucunda et utilia. 
Basileae, 1569. 

Archidoxorum A, P. T. Paracelsi de Secretis Naturce Mysteriis libri 
septem, fyc. Basileae, 1570, 

Dictionarium T. Paracelsi continens obscuriorum vocabulorum, quibus 
in suis scriptis . . . utitur definitionem. Francoforti, 1 584. 

Les xiv livres de Paragrapb.es de Ph. T. Paracelse, ou sont contenus 
en epitome ses secrets admirables, tant phisiques que chirurgiques 
pour la curation tres certaine des maladies estimees incurables ; a 
scavoir la Lepre, VEpilepsie, ITydropisee, Paralisie, Fievres et 
autres, $-c. Paris, 1631. 

Bombast von Hohenheim, Phil, Aureol. Theop. called Paracelsus, of 
the Supreme Mysteries of Nature; of the Spirits of the Planets ; 
Occult Philosophy; the Magical, Sympathetica/, and Antipathe- 
tical Cure of Wounds fy Diseases. Englished by B. Turner. 
QikoixaOrig. London, 1656. 

Philosophy Reformed and Improved, in four profound tractates. Made 
English for the increase of learning and true knowledge. London, 
printed for Lodowick Lloyd at the Castle in Cornhill, 1657. 

Three Books of Philosophy written to the Athenians by that famous, 
most excellent, and approved Philosopher and Phisitian Aureal. 
Philip. Theop. Bombast of Hohenheim, commonly called Paracelsus. 
Done into English for the increase of the knowledge and the 
fear of God. By a young seeker of truth and holines. London, 
1657. 

Secretum omnium Secretorum, das ist, von der Heimlichkeit aller 
Heimlichkeiten {attributed to Paracelsus). 1676. 

Paracelsus. By Robert Browning {A Poem). London, Effingham 
Wilson, 1835. 






AUEEOLUS PHILIPPUS THEOPHEASTUS 

PAEACELSUS, BOMBAST OF 

HOHENHEIM. 



^ 



HEEE is one reason why we may wish 
spiritualism to be true, that thereby we 
might claim acquaintance with the dead. 
For a man shall not have lived long before 
he shall have passed the grand meridian, and may num- 
ber more acquaintance with the dead than the living. 
More than this, if he be a reading man, there will be 
many with whom he would like to converse : he might 
wish to hob-a-nob with Eobert Herrick ; to drink deep 
draughts with Ben Jonson ; to have really " a nicht wi' 
Burns." There be surely more of the dead than of the 
living whom we should care to know ; for, in spite of the 
gruff Doctor's assertion, that a reasonable man of the 
world would rather dine with a great lord than with the 
greatest genius, we would rather have a quiet meal with 
Shakespeare than feast with twenty lords, and would 
delight to take our bread and cresses with Plato, St. John, 
and Bunyan. Such " an hour with the mystics," Spenser 



166 VARIA. 

and Heine dropping in, with Goethe in the company, such 
would outbid even a lord-mayor's supper, followed by a 
nightmare into the bargain. But of all men — more 
especially as they live in their own works, and we can 
enjoy them en famille without the intervention of the new 
light — those with whom one would choose chiefly to gossip 
would be Sir Thomas Browne, Peter Bayle, Montaigne, 
Hazlitt, and Coleridge, forming a select circle of " Friends 
in Council." 

An evening, these being with us, might well be given 
to Nostradamus, Michael Scot, and Paracelsus. The 
last has had a singular fate. Unknown to many, his 
fame with some transcends that of any votary of science 
of his day, and, clothed in a nebulous mystery, looms 
largely in the far distant middle ages, ages receding 
rapidly from us, more rapidly every day. His portrait it 
would be difficult to portray fully. His boldness, loud 
boasting, and his dark history have made a great im- 
pression on the mind of one of our greatest, perhaps our 
greatest poet, who, from a poor original, has produced an 
ideal enchanter, a devotee of true science whom the world 
will t not willingly let die. Pictured by himself, or by 
what remains of him, the physician is one who would in 
the garden of Paradise have plucked not one apple only, 
but a whole branch of the tree of knowledge, and would 
have greedily eaten the fruit thereof. But, after all, his 
is a face behind a veil, seen but faintly; "clothed in 
white samite, mystic, wonderful," and never to be fully 
portrayed, or to be hawked about in one-and-sixpenny slides 



PABACELSUS. 167 

for the world's stereoscopes. But others have loved him 
as well as I. A poet, whom the world rates not jet as he 
will be rated, hath written of him, painted him in the 
ideal, a knowledge-seeker, " one who desired to know," 
and did not care in what way he attained his end. 

" That profound Philosopher and Phisytion Aureol 5 
Philippus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast of Hohen- 
heim, who was poysned y e 47th yeare of his age," — we 
quote from the imprint of his lively Portraicture prefixed 
to a little Dryasdustian brown book, — was born of a noble 
father, noble extra thorum, Wilhelm Bombast von Hohen- 
heim, about the year 1493. He added sometimes to his 
long name that of Eremus, and some dozen of other 
sounding titles, finishing all up with the words utriusque 
Medicince Doctor. Paracelsus was educated as a phy- 
sician ; what that education was it is not easy now to say. 
He had to grope his way amongst uncertainties, to 
swallow what we now know to be the veriest nonsense of 
old wives' tales, — to plunge into the mysteries of the 
cabala, to walk in darkness, to depend upon monkish 
tradition, and to mutter charms. Mystery and mysticism 
were his daily food in those dark ages ; but he went for- 
ward boldly, and as boldly affirms that he had penetrated 
all secrets, had gone through the whole curriculum of 
philosophy, and had arrived at the knowledge of the secret 
things of life and the hidden virtues of nature. It is 
only by placing ourselves in his situation, before the birth 
of inductive philosophy, that we can arrive at any kind of 
stock-taking of our present knowledge. Little enough, 



168 VARIA. 

in good faith, do we ourselves know ; weak, blind, and 
foolish is humanity now : but then, then, when all the 
vulgar errors Sir Thomas Browne has so well discoursed 
of were each texts and theorems, — then the darkness of 
ignorance must have been dense indeed ! 

Far afield went our " physition " to arrive even at the 
dawn. He travelled for ten years, between 1513 and 
1523-4, visiting every celebrated college in Europe, and, 
like Plato and Pythagoras, wending eastward and looking 
to Egypt for his lore. He penetrated into Arabia, and 
conversed with sages and magicians ; he tells us, in his 
own rich and. gorgeous style, that he "turned over the 
leaves of Europe, Asia, Africa, and in so doing suffered 
much hardship ; he fell into captivity, and bore arms as a 
soldier." More particularly did he traverse Spain, Ger- 
many, Italy, Denmark, Hungary, Muscovy, and then 
Asia. He spent some time in Persia, was taken prisoner 
by the Tartars, and carried before the Cham, by whom 
he was sent on a mission to Constantinople. 

He studied the works of Raymond Lullius, of Villanova, 
and other adepts. Great was he upon transmutation of 
metals ; he had found the aurum <potabile, and talked with 
Jews, quacks, wizards and witches, boatmen, bathmen, 
and beggars. He boasts, as well he might, that he learnt 
more from strollers and gipsies than from the learned 
doctors of the schools. He gave and took ; and, in return 
for knowledge thus acquired, cured hopeless maladies and 
desperate diseases — gout, dropsy, leprosy, and fevers of 
all kinds. He w T as received everywhere as the learned 



PARACELSUS. 169 

doctor ; and, vagabond and true Bohemian as he was, had 
acquired a fame which far outran him and reached his 
native country before its owner. But he was still poor, 
until a lucky chance led him to Basil, where Jacob Fro- 
ben, a learned printer, lay suffering from an acute pain in 
his right foot, which no present leech could cure. This 
torture Froben had endured so long that he could neither 
eat nor sleep. Paracelsus was called in, attended to and 
bathed the patient's foot, and then exhibited his grand 
specific, which, as we may gather, was laudanum ; three 
little black balls — tres jpillulas nigras — did Froben swal- 
low with, to him, immense service. He slept, his faith 
in physic was restored, and in a short time he was a 
sound man. He died, however, some months after of 
apoplexy. " He could not be persuaded to follow the 
advice of his judicious physician. The man, in fact, was 
old and apoplectic, and he died, careless of consequences. " 
So says Erasmus, who believed in very little ; but, to the 
glory of Paracelsus, he believed in him, and in his magis- 
trate arcanum, his grand specific. 

The cure of this apoplectic printer raised Paracelsus to 
a pinnacle of glory. He was elected to the chair of 
medicine of Basil, and in this position gave vent to some of 
that grandiloquent spirit which seems to have inflated the 
old alchemists, as it did that magnificent creation of Ben 
Jonson, Sir Epicure Mammon. To the strange weird 
teaching of Paracelsus — to that apotheosis of mundane 
knowledge and intellect, when the lay mind of the age, 
for a moment freed from the priests, seemed about to 



170 VABIA. 

arise in its strength, and snatch new triumphs from the 
sky, — to this teaching flocked the youth of Germany, of 
France, and Italy. The minstrel and the poet, the free- 
lance and jongleur, the sucking physician and the lawyer, 
the unfrocked monk and the layman, in quest of more 
than the priestly schools could teach them, were alike 
ready to listen, to admire, to applaud. There is in the 
museum at Antwerp a strange painting of the period of 
which we are writing, representing the procession to the 
crucifixion of our Lord. There, too, all the trades of the 
world are seen — types of all the people who aided in the 
cruel work — flocking forwards to the sight. There come 
the pedlars and tinkers, musician, artist, and handicrafts- 
man; there, too, the scholar and priest, joking, thickly 
pressed together, pushing each otljer, chaffing, laughing, 
full of life, eager to watch for the Death, — there they are, 
the very images of the townsmen and countrymen of the 
painter, who has taken care — surely not in ignorance, 
but with some meaning* — to picture the ruffians of the 
Jewish mob in the costume of his own age. What kind 
of import and signification would such a crucifixion have 
painted in the costumes of our day : with our high or low 
church curate, our dean and doctor, sleek tradesman, 
smug bishop, and ladies with ample crinoline ? Would it 
not bring the reality home to men's business and bosoms ? 



* Thus, in Bernard Zan's piece of Abraham about to sacrifice his 
son Isaac with a horse-pistol, the anachronism is at once great and 
exceedingly droll, but surely intended. 



PARACELSUS. 171 

Such a mob, as portra} r ed by the, to me, unknown painter, 
listened to the orations of Paracelsus. He discarded the 
learned tongue, and lectured in German. He sent a new 
thrill through the untaught bosoms of the people. He 
was not one to hide his light under a bushel ; but, as he 
poured forth his words, told his audience freely that he 
knew more than all the old school put together. Shouting 
aloud in the plenitude of his self-love, he took, in the 
sight of his audience, a brazen vase, from which flames 
darted, and in which he placed nitre and sulphur ; and 
when the lurid flame blazed up, he cast in the works of 
Galen, Avicenna, and the Arab doctors, shouting out at 
the same time, " Thus, doctors, shall ye burn in ever- 
lasting fire ! Behind me !" he continued ; " get thee 
behind me, — arriere-moi, Grec, Latin, Arab ! Ye have 
told hitherto but old wives' tales. The secret of all 
nature belongs to me." 

It is not alone Paracelsus who has railed at his brothers 
in the healing art, not he alone has called their shops col- 
luvies jusculorum — slop-receptacles ; but whoever has done 
so has, we may well know, braved the hatred of all the 
rest of the pulse-feeling tribe. The possibility of a doc- 
tor making the sick man worse is no novelty in our own 
day ; nor was it in his. We can trace it down through 
ages. Martial has a good epigram, one out of nearly thirty, 
against the tribe : — 

I slightly ailed ; a hundred doctors come 
(With finger icy-tipp'd and gelid thumb), 
Prescribe their nostrums vile, to purge or bleed : — 
At first I ailed ; but now I'm sick indeed. 



172 VARIA, 

And we may remember that Sir Godfrey offered to take 
anything of Dr. Eadcliffe save his physic ; and Garrick 
would accept any present of Sir John Hill save his pro- 
fessional advice, which he contemned. But, notwithstand- 
ing these quips and cranks, it is a bold thing to raise one's 
voice against the killing and draughting tribe ; and Pa- 
racelsus raised a host of enemies by his outcry against 
established favourites. He was like Ishmael; but he 
laid about him fiercely, and had salt in him. 

A recent writer on the subject has noticed the obvious 
fact that, — " In the time of Paracelsus patients were even 
more unfortunate than in our days. Materia medica, or 
the arsenal from which the physicians drew their weapons, 
contained a mass of heterogeneous substances, the selec- 
tion of which the most grotesque fancy, rather than the 
wisdom of the sage, appeared to have regulated. Thera- 
peutics resembled one of those armouries in which toma- 
hawks and arms from Patagonia are laid by the side of 
the more effective weapons used in modern warfare. If 
the human body is a chemical laboratory, it was then in- 
trusted with transmutations which modern science has 
rejected as impossible. The old pharmaceutical cata- 
logues present horrors far surpassing those of Bluebeard's 
forbidden chamber; for in those lists are seen scattered 
about, not the limbs of poets, not the headless trunks of 
lovely women, but the different parts of apes, lions, bats, 
serpents, toads — of almost all known European beasts, and 
of many exotic animals besides, changed ' from their ordi- 
nance to monstrous quality ' — to remedies given, not on 



PARACELSUS. 173 

account of any empirically beneficial effect of theirs, but 
solely because of the mystical correspondence supposed to 
exist between them and the diseases they were made to 
combat. In affections of the liver, for instance, a dried 
wolf's liver was prescribed, or a donkey's liver, pounded 
in honey. Scorpions and spiders were ingurgitated whole. 
Zwelfer extolled the virtues of the toad against the plague. 
Moles on the face could be cured by being touched with a 
dead man's hand, which was to be kept on the face till it 
became warm. Van Helmont, having almost been stared 
to death by a toad, recovered by the use of treacle and the 
powder of vipers. The medicine of those days, half su- 
perstitious, half scientific, resembles those illustrations in 
old medical books, which display a strange mixture of 
stern and sentimental occurrences, which represent a sur- 
geon boring a patient's head with a gouge, while surround- 
ing ladies are wringing their hands, crying, or praying ; 
while, by a touch of satirical symbolism, a cat is portrayed 
devouring a mouse in a corner. What would a modern 
patient say, if, having succeeded in deciphering his doc- 
tor's prescription, he read, ' mus combustits ' ? He would 
probably like to be allowed eggs for breakfast, but scarcely 
' eggs of frog or lizard.' A lady in hysterics might not 
perceive the efficacy of ' deer's tears, dried ' ! Consump- 
tive persons might object to ' jpulmones pre/parati' pre- 
pared lungs of fox. Pale persons would scarcely relish 
an infusion of the blood of 'bat,' ' rhinoceros,' ' rat,' (fee. 
And yet all these things were prescribed and taken in the 
' good old times.' But there were many more remedies — 



174 VARIA. 

c Abominable, unutterable, and worse.' 

Every organ, every secretion or excretion of every strange 
animal was used in medicine. The ludicrous and gro- 
tesque sometimes give place to the horrible in these no- 
menclatures. Thus we find that the fat of a hanged man 
was good ; powder of human skull had many virtues, and 
cured Boyle ' radically ? of a bleeding of the nose. A 
beheaded man's blood was beneficial when drunk yet warm ; 
a human skin, well tanned, worn, used as a belt, had a re- 
storative efficacy." 

But our physician himself, although he abused his bre- 
thren, seems to have been but little wiser. Let the fol- 
lowing extracts from one of his books* bear this testimony 
at least. The first is a somewhat long dissertation on the 
virtues of the herb Persicaria, or water-pepper, to which 
liberal shepherds, as well as our English translator, "give 
a grosser name." 

" But now to show you the virtues of this herb : as soon 
as you have pulled it out of the ground, draw it through 
water, or through the streams of a river or a spring, w T hich 
is best of all, then lay it upon that part which is to be 
cured so long as you may be eating half an egg 9 then take 
it away and bury it in a moist place, where it may rot, 

* In consequence of the long list of books consulted in this ar- 
ticle, we have given the title of this one in a note: — "Paracelsus 
his Dispensatory and Chirugery (the Dispensatory contains the 
choisest of his Physical remedies, and all that can be desired of his 
Chirugery, you have in the treatises of Wounds, Ulcers, and Apos- 
thumes). Faithfully Englished by W. D. London, 1656." 



PARACELSUS. 175 

and as it putrifies the sore heals ; some do sign the signe 
of the crosse and use a kind of prayer for it ; but such 
doings are impertinent and absurd ; for the operation of 
the herb is natural, not superstitious or magical." But at 
other times he can use the magical and supernatural way 
of cure freely, and in his Celestial Medicines he speaks 
thus of preserving the sight without physic : — 

" Make thee a round lamen of the best lead in the hour 
of <j>. the > being in the signe <y>, and in the same hour, 
to wit in the hour of 9? engrave the signes and letters 
which you will see written in the following figure. After- 
wards in the hour of T? make a copper lamen of the same 
quantity and form as the leaden one ; when > is in the 
signe vj 5 ? the characters which you will see in the figure 
are to be engraven thereon, &c. These are to be en- 
closed in wax, so that they receive no moisture, sewn in a 
piece of silk, and hung about the neck of a patient in the 
day and hour of g ." This, Paracelsus assures us, is the 
best remedy to recover the sight of the eyes and to pre- 
serve the eyes from pain and disease. " It preserveth the 
sight in old age as perfect as it was in youth." One lamen 
in the engraving is about the size of a penny piece of 
George III ; the smaller about the circumference of one 
of the godless florins of Victoria. 

While venting such stuff as this, in which it is hard to 
believe that he himself could have had any faith, Paracel- 
bus does not forget to attack his opponents ; and, after treat- 
ing of the spider, "a hateful creature," he says, " Having 
done with these hateful and poysonous creatures, now I 



176 VARIA. 

will speak concerning other common and contemptible 
small creatures ; and I hope I shall not be blamed for 
this, nor shall these things I speak be esteemed as famed 
tales, as false physicians do who will not use any common 
medicines, such as may be gotten cheaply and easily, not 
remembering this, that God hath created nothing in vain, 
but that even the least and most contemptible things have 
their peculiar virtues according to His divine pleasure." 
No doubt this severe recital served our physician well ; he 
pretended by lowly study to have penetrated the secrets 
of Nature and to be able to instruct mankind. That the 
present generation may not miss his great gift, it will be 
as well to transcribe firstly a cure for warts, which our 
schoolboy readers can easily try ; and secondly, an infal- 
lible cure for any wound, which will serye both our sol- 
diers, our volunteers, and but too often our civilians. 

" To cure warts. Take oyl of juniper berries one ounce, 
th oyl of spike two drams, oleum laterinum, or buck oyl, 
seven drams ; mix them, and with this anoint the warts." 

" A potion which being drunk will cure any wound ! 
Take of adder's tongue three handfuls, of periwinkle the 
lesser one handful, of honeysuckle one handful and a half, 
of rheubarbe one ounce, of rhaponticke three ounces : put 
them into two gallons of water, boyl it to six quarts, or 
put them into new ale or new beer four or five days, then 
let the patient drink of it." 

We may laugh at Paracelsus now ; but in skill he was 
ahead of his rivals. He cured a judge, saved the life of a 
canon residentiary with three black pellets, — tres murini 



PARACELSUS. 177 

stercoris pillulas, — some say compounded of his secret 
medicine, opium, which, we presume, he got from the East. 
When the canon was cured, he would not pay the fee : the 
dose was so small, the charge so large. Paracelsus sum- 
moned his patient before the judges. They, stupid fellows ! 
only ordered the ordinary fee ; and our magical doctor, in 
a torrent of indignant eloquence, abused the judges. Few 
can help siding with him now. Nor, indeed, was our phy- 
sician to blame. Bayle has remarked that in the middle 
ages the fees of physicians were enormous. In iiis article 
on Petrus Aponensis he tells us that that clever man, who, 
like Paracelsus, was suspected of magic, would not go out 
of town to visit the sick under 150 francs a day ; a large sum, 
since the money was worth at least fifteen times as much 
as it is now. Being sent for by the Pope Honorius IV, 
Aporius, or Aponensis, demanded four hundred ducats a 
day. Yander Linden relates the same thing, but without 
naming the patient. Bayle quotes another physician 
mentioned by Lancelot de Perouse as claiming 100 
crowns a day, and as returning from the Pope richer 
by 10,000 crowns. The same story, with some varia- 
tion, is told of Paul Freher, professor of medicine at Bo- 
logna, that he was sent for from all parts of Italy, but 
never left his town under fifty crowns a day, and that for 
curing Honorius he received 1000 crowns. Variations 
enough, says Bayle, truly ; Honorius must have paid his 
physicians highly, and Paracelsus may plead precedents. 

What evil has been done by weak and incompetent pur- 
veyors of the law from Pontius Pilatus downwards ! Marry, 

N 



178 VABIA. 

is this the law? ISTo wonder that Paracelsus devoted his 
judges to that place wherein he had already deposited the 
doctors. ~No wonder also, when the officers looked for 
him the next day, that he, dreading the ire of the mag- 
nates, had fled. 

He left at Basil his chemicals, tests, and laboratory, in 
charge of Oporinus, his scholar and friend, who filled to- 
wards him the place which Wagner does to Faustus in 
Marlowe's play ; and it is from this Oporinus, an ungrate- 
ful apostate, and afterwards — therefore perhaps, world ! 
— a rich and highly-respected citizen of Basil, that we 
learn something of the inner life of Paracelsus. With 
Oporinus, then a young and hungry scholar, the great 
master also left his magistrate arcanum, laudanum, which 
some time afterwards saved his life. It is possible, we hope 
probable, for the sake of the physician, that the relation of 
Oporinus is greatly exaggerated. " Adeo erat totis diebus 
et noctibus, dum ego familiariter per biennium fere con- 
vixi, ebrietati et crapulaB deditus," &c. " Thus, whilst I 
chummed with him for nearly two years, was he both by 
night and day given to gluttony and drunkenness. Hardly 
was he sober for one hour, whilst he went forth from Basil 
to Alsatia amongst the noble rustics and the rustic nobles, 
healing them and teaching them, and everywhere received 
like another iEsculapius. He was a wonder to and the 
admiration of all. In the mean time, in his most drunken 
moments, he would return home, and dictate to me 
some of his wild philosophy. Nor did he ever put off 
his clothes in the night-time during the two years I was 



PARACELSUS. 179 

with him; but, girt about with his sword, which, he 
boasted, had been that of some executioner, he would lie 
down on his couch, drunken with wine, towards the small 
hours of the morning. In a short time he would arise in 
the dead waste of darkness, and lay about him with his 
naked sword ; now striking the bed, the floor, the door- 
posts, or the walls, in so wild a manner that I more than 
once feared for the safety of my head (ut ego non semel 
caput amputatum iri rnetuerem)." 

Melchior Adam tells us, in addition to this, that he 
would often embrace this man-slaying sword, boasting 
that in the pommel of it was enclosed his Azoth, his 
familiar imp,* and that with this imp he would hold 
conversation, and talk wildly; but Melchior Adam 
states that perhaps he had only a bit of the true stone 
therein. 

Possessed, then, of " that thirsty devil whose name is 
Quaff," to quote Luther, when speaking of his own coun- 
trymen, we need not wonder that the respectabilities of the 



* Bumbastes kept a devil's bird 
Shut in the pummel of his sword, 
That taught him all the cunning pranks 
Of past and future mountebanks. 

Hudibras, part ii. cant. 3. 

Ne yet of guacum one small stick, Sir, 
Nor Raymond Lully's great elixir ; 
Ne had he known the Danish foxwort, 
Or Paracelsus with his long sword. 

Jonson's Volpone, act ii. sc. 2. 



180 • YAEIA. 

various towns in which he stayed did not consort with him. 
He had offended the lawyers and the doctors, and he was 
about to insult the third great power — the clerics. He is 
a strong man who, in this roundabout world, dare fight 
against law, physic, and divinity. Paracelsus attempted 
it, and was wofully beaten. Called in one day to a dying 
peasant, he observed with him a priest, who held some- 
thing to his lips. "Has the patient taken anything?" 
asked Theophrastus. "Nothing," answered the priest; 
" I was about to give him the Corpus Christi." "If he 
has called in another physician," returned the leech, " he 
doth not need me;" and he forthwith departed. 

Whatever excuse may be made for this hasty and, 
looked at from a religious point, very profane speech, — 
whether the maker perceived that his patient was beyond 
help, or whether he only girded at the priest, — we know 
not ; but the outcry raised against him was immense, and 
he was again about to fly. Oporinus joined the great 
body of respectables, taking with him what he could of 
his master's secrets, by which soon after, it is related, he 
saved his own life ; and arose to be professor of Greek at 
Basil. He afterwards devoted his life to the profession of 
a printer, and died, full of years and honour, in 1568. 

With his magic drug, his Azoth and Astoroth, and his 
great, bold, braggadocio heart, Paracelsus again set forward 
in life. He spent some time in Bavaria, where he healed 
a nobleman ; some months in Poland, where he cured 
the king's physician. Everywhere he and his potent drug 
became celebrated, but he grew not rich. He was born 



PARACELSUS. 181 

out of his time, — after or before it, what matters ? He 
was a wanderer, a Bohemian, a crapulous and drunken 
man — drunken with great passions and a strong scorn of 
the world. He who could have achieved everything which 
the world then thought great, threw away his time, and did 
little. Towards the end of his life some small honours 
were forced upon him. In 1536 he dedicated his Cliirur- 
gia Major to the Emperor of Germany, vindicated the 
character of his father and his own right to the^ succession 
of the property left by him, ruffled it with the nobles, 
talked with and astonished priests, made a convert of the 
Archbishop of Salzburg, and was by him persuaded to 
settle in that city. But he did not long enjoy his settle- 
ment, dying, after a lingering illness, in 1541, aged forty- 
eight years. The portrait affixed to the little brown book 
affirms, in the legend under it, that he " was poysned " 
in the forty-seventh year of his age ; upon what authority 
we know not. They who assert that Paracelsus boasted 
of having discovered the Elixir of Life, add, no doubt for 
the sake of antithesis, that he " died with a bottle of his 
immortal Catholicon in his pocket ;" but, as these worthies 
must be aware that there are some complaints in which 
laudanum, his Catholicon, cannot be exhibited, they might 
charitably have supposed that he died of one of these. 
He left a very full and particular will ; and with a portion 
of his fortune his executors built the hospital of St. Sebas- 
tian, in Salzburg, where his tablet is yet to be seen, en- 
titling him an " insignis doctor," curer of leprosy, gout, 
and dropsy, who left his goods to the poor, and on the 



182 VARIA. 

date mentioned exchanged this life for a better, vitam 
cum morte mutavit. His portrait was painted bj Tinto- 
retto, and shows us a bold hard face, with a good forehead, 
a prominent nose, a determined chin, and heroic bearing, 
bull-throated, broad-shouldered, sic occulos, sic or a tulit.* 
This portrait we have engraved on our title-page. 

It will now be as well to glance at this master's works. 
The translator of the two tracts of Paracelsus and Croillus 
has told us, truly enough, that in both we shall meet with 
" some uncouthe and unusuall words," which for better 
" understandinge " he has taken upon himself to explain. 
Thus the Aclecte, he tells us, is the invisible and inward 
man, which shapeth those things in the mind that are after- 
wards done with the hands. This is an explanation of 
the connection between the will and the muscles not at 
present dreamt of. The world also stands, we are told, 
upon the Archaltes, pillars or supports something like 
those of Hercules : whereon these pillars rest even this 
prince of "physitions" does not inform us. We may 
judge, however, that the world is as flat as the dial of a 
watch, and that the Yankee's wish, that he could walk 
right away to the edge and peep over, is not impracticable. 

But with what curious and wondrous dreams did not our 
early chemists lull themselves to sleep ! As the knight 
rode through the crowds of water-spirits in La Motte 
Fouque's story, and as St. Anthony in the old paintings 
is surrounded by troops of spirits, so also myriads swarmed 

* Epig. by Christ. Manlius. 



PARACELSUS. 183 

round the brain of the old alchemists. Archeus was the 
chief invisible spirit, the occult virtue, the artificer in 
every one. Dases was the secret vapour, the spirit from 
which wood grows; and from the occult vapour Enur 
stones were formed and grew in water. Hagse were 
spirits who knew the secret things of men ; the Gnomes, 
made popular by Pope's poem, were little men scarce half 
a foot high, spirits, but living under the earth ; and the 
Lemures were either the spirits and elements of water, or 
those of the dead come to life again. By the Penates our 
physician understood, not those household gods with whom 
our early lessons in Virgil made us acquainted, but spirits 
of the earth and of the element of fire ; the Sylps were 
pigmies or dwarfs ; the Travames, the actions of the spirits 
and ghosts of dead men, heard but not seen. 

Surrounded by these and by others, the philosopher of 
the middle ages, or indeed the priest, nun, or peasant with 
any imagination, could not have lived a very quiet life. 
No wonder at their ghosts and midnight fears and horrors. 
No wonder that darkness terrified them out of their wits. 
We should not love to be subject to the continued interrup- 
tion of any of the above ; nay, nor to be courted by the 
Melosinse, " despairing women now living in a phantasta- 
ticall bruittish body, nourished by the elements into which 
they will be changed, unless they chaunce to marrie with a 
manne." 

Let us first ascertain this accomplished physician's 
manner of accounting for the creation, a subject which 
puzzles great philosophers even now. Pie divides his mat- 



184 VARIA. 

ter into texts ; and the first, by a marginal note, we find is 
this : " The great mysterie is the mother of all things. " 
This ejaculation is expanded in the text in this manner: 
" All created things are of a fraill and perishing nature, 
and had all at first but one only principle or beginning. 
In this principle all things under the cope of heaven were 
enclosed and lay hid ; which is thus to be understood, that 
ail things proceeded out of one matter, and not every par- 
ticular thing out of its own private matter by itselfe. This 
common matter of all things is the Greate Mysterie, which 
no certain essence or prefigured or formed idea could com- 
prehend, nor could it comply with any property, it being 
altogether void of colour and elementary nature. The 
scope of this greate mysterie is as large as the firmament. 
And the greate mysterie was the mother of all the ele- 
ments, and the grandmother of all the Starrs, trees, and 
carnall creatures. As children are born of a mother, so 
all created things, whether sensible or insensible, all things 
whatsoever were uniformly brought out of the great mys- 
terie. So that the greate Mysterie is the one mother of 
all perishing things, out of which they all sprung, not in 
order of succession or continuation, but they came forth 
together and at once, in one creation, substance, matter, 
form, essence, nature and inclination." After this we are 
not much wiser than before ; but it must be owned that 
Paracelsus has a certain grand manner of venting nothing. 
That water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen, two 
measures of the latter to one of the former, every reader 
of the most elementary treatise on natural philosophy now 



PARACELSUS. 185 

knows. The following w T ill perhaps therefore serve as well 
as any other citation to help us to ascertain the amount of 
true chemical science possessed by Paracelsus. Text 17 
is on " the various complexions of water/' and is as fol- 
lows : " Nor did water obtaine one kind of complexion 
onely. For there were infinite waters in that Element, 
which yet were all truly waters. The Phylosopher cannot 
understand that the Element of water is onely cold and 
moyst of it selfe. It is an hundred times more cold, and 
not more moyst, and yet it is not to be refer'd as well to 
the hotnesse as the coldnesse. JSTor doth the element of 
water live and flourish onely in cold and moyst in one de- 
gree : no neither is it fully and wholly of one degree. 
Some waters are fountain es, which are of many sorts. 
Some are seas, which also are many and divers. Other 
are streams and rivers and none of which is like another. 
Some watry elements were disposed of into stones, as Berill, 
Chrystal, Calceclony, Amethyst. Some into plants, as Co- 
rall, &c. Some into juyce, as the liquor of life. Many 
in the earth, as the moysture of the ground. These are 
the Elements of water, but in a manifold sort. For that 
which groweth out of the earth, from the seed that was 
sown, that also belongs to the element of water. So what 
was fleshy as the Nymphs belong also to the element of 
water. Though in this case we may conceive that the 
element of water was changed into another complexion, 
yet it doth never put off or passe from that very nature of 
the element from which it proceeded. Whatsoever is of 
the water, turneth again to water : that which is of fire 



186 VAEIA. 

into fire ; that of earth into earth ; and that of aire into 
aire." From which it is very plain that our physician 
did not know what fire or water was. 

Nor is he any wiser as to the electricity and electric 
storms of the air ; for " thunder/' he writes, " comes from 
the procreations of the firmament, because that consisteth 
of the element of fire. Thunder is, as it were, the harvest 
of the stars at the very instant of time when it was ready 
to work according to its nature. Magicall tempests rise 
out of the aire and there end" This is poetically grand. 
What follows has much more of the comic element in its 
floundering braggadocio. " Many things proceed out of 
the store (i.e. of nature) through mistake, or in (un)due 
time. Deformed men, ivormes, and many more such like 
generations, proceed from the impressions. The infection 
of countries, the plague and famine, is from the fatal! 
stormes. Beetles, cankers, dalnes (?), breed in dung. To 
the elements did there but four special kindes of the great 
mystery belong, so they had but four principles. Eut men 
had six hundred. Crump -feeted men had one, the Ci- 
clopes another. Gyants another, the Medchili another. 
So had they that dwell in the earth, in the aire, in the 
water, and in the fire. Things that also grow had every 
one its own proper mysterie in the Greate Mysterie whence 
came out so many kinds of creatures. So many trees, so 
many men, so many mysteries too." 

Even when Paracelsus leaves his windy discourse on 
things of which he knows nothing, for a few moments, 



PARACELSUS. 187 

and tells us that " Earthy men are not happy/' as he does 
in the eleventh text of the second book of his philosophy, 
he is sensible only for a short time. The following sen- 
tence might have been written by Sir Thomas Browne or 
have been penned by Euskin : " It is a silly and vain 
philosophy to place all happiness and eternity in our ele- 
ment of earth. A foolish opinion is it to boast that we 
only are of all creatures the most noble. There are more 
worlds than one; nor are there none besides us in our 
own. But this ignorance is much more capitall 'that we 
know not those men that are of the same element with us, 
as the Nocturnals, Gnomes, <fec. who, though they live 
not in the clear glory of heaven, nor have any light of the 
firmament, but hate what we love, and love what we hate, 
and though they are not like us in form, essence, or sus- 
tentation ; yet is there no cause of wonder. For they 
were made such in the great mystery. We are not all 
that are made ; there are many more whom we know 
not of." 

Would that all that Paracelsus had written were like to 
this, but, alas ! his medical writings are full of credulity or 
imposture. He believed, or pretended to believe, that 
man could himself create or make a child resembling 
those born of women, only smaller and weaker, and his 
directions for this strange proceeding are, says a critic 
very justly, "too absurd and indecent to be quoted." 
He tells us that " Stannar is the mother of metals, and 
that metals are nothing but thickened smoke from 



188 • VARIA. 

stannar ; that man is composed of smoke, ' Man is a 
coagulated fume/ and that the coagulation of the sper- 
matick matter is made of nothing but the seething 
vapours and spermatick members of the body. We see 
nothing in our own selves but thickened smoke made 
up into a man by humane predestination." More- 
over, " fiery dragons and ghosts proceed from stones ;" 
and " things invisible eat and are nourished as well 
as things visible/' about which, at least, he could know 
nothing. He attempts closely to explain the analogy 
which he supposes to exist between the Macrocosmos or 
external world and the Microcosmos or human body, and 
believed that every physician ought to be able to point 
out in man the east and west and the signs of the Zodiac, 
according, indeed, to that ancient catalogue still printed 
in Zadkiel's and Moore's almanacs. He tells us that 
the human body contains, or rather consists of nothing 
but mercury, sulphur, and salt. He recommends people, 
in curing a wound, to use the verba constellata, or astro- 
logical and cabalistic words, which would effect a certain 
cure when all other methods had failed. 

" He made great use of cabalistic writers," says 
Tennemann (" Manual of Philosophy"), " which he endea- 
voured to render popular, and expounded with a lively 
imagination." He belonged to the school of the Mystics, 
and has himself founded a school. His mystic notions 
were many, chief amongst them are those of an emana- 
tion from the Deity, of an internal illumination, of the 
influence of the stars, of the vitality of the elements, 



PARACELSUS. 189 

which, as we have before seen, he thought were fed and 
nourished, and of the universal harmony of all things. 

In the notes to his wonderful poem, which the public at 
first received somewhat coldly,* Browning asserts that the 
Azoth of Paracelsus shut in the pommel of his sword was 
merely his specific laudanum ; and Brande,in his " Manual 
of Chemistry,*' tells us " that through his discoveries, 
original discoveries were few and unimportant ; his great 
merit lies in the boldness and assiduity which he displayed 
in introducing chemical preparations into the * -Materia 
Medica/ and in subduing the prejudices of the Galenical 
physicians against the productions of the laboratory. 
But, though we can fix upon no particular discovery on 
which to found his merits as a chemist, and though his 
writings are deficient in the acumen and knowledge dis- 
played by several of his contemporaries and immediate 
successors, it is undeniable that he gave a most important 
turn to pharmaceutical chemistry, and calomel, with a 
variety of mercurial and antimonial preparations, as like- 
wise opium, came into general use." 



* I have a copy of the first edition, of which probably only a 
very small number were printed. The preface is dated March, 1835, 
and the book was published by Effingham Wilson. A list of Mr. 
Moxon's books, dated 1846, is stitched up with it, and reveals the 
fact that eleven years had passed away, but that the first edition 
of one of the most remarkable poems written had not passed out of 
print, To compare this neglect with the present estimation of 
Browning will be both instructive and consolatory to unsuccessful 
poets. 



190 VARIA. 

The notices which Mr. Hallam accords to Paracelsus 
are by no means few, but they are very unfavourable. 
He regards him in his truest light, that of a poetical 
quack. " Germany/' which Hallam truly says " is the 
native soil of mysticism in Europe, is fond of the unin- 
telligible dreams of the school of Paracelsus." The ten- 
dency to reflex observation in the German mind was at 
that time accompanied with a profound sense of the 
presence of Deity; "yet one which, acting on their 
thoughtful spirits, became rather an impression than an 
intellectual judgment, and settled into a mysterious in- 
definite theopathy, when it did not evaporate in pan- 
theism." The tendency to evaporate in pantheism is 
shown in the philosophy of Paracelsus, by his accouni 
of gnomes, sylphs, Sylvesters, montanes, and tonnets, of 
which I have before spoken, and to the creation of which, 
long before Pope had used the machinery for his poem, 
Paracelsus has as much a right to be credited as any 
one. He was followed by a whole school of mystics, 
in which Jacob Boehm and even Swedenborg may be 
classed. 

" His chemical theories," Hallam says, " descended 
from Paracelsus through Van Helmont, and were propa- 
gated chiefly by Sylvius, a physician of Holland. His 
leading principle was that a perpetual fermentation goes 
on in the human body, from the deranged action of which 
diseases proceed ; most of them from an excess of acidity, 
though few are of alkaline origin." " He degraded the 
physician," says Sprengel, " to the level of a distiller or a 



PARACELSUS. 191 

brewer.''* There are many who will even now question 
whether this theory be not the true one after all ; if so, 
medicine does indeed owe much to Paracelsus, even in 
spite of his followers the Posicrucians. These held that 
a man who was a true Posicrucian had only to look at a 
patient to cure him. This seems to be merely the first 
faint budding forth of the doctrine of magnetic cure. 
" All things," says Croillus, or Croll, of Hesse, a theoso- 
phist after Paracelsus' own heart, " in the Macrocosm are 
found also in the Microcosm. The inward and actual 
man is Graballis, from which the science is named. This 
Gaballis or imagination is as a magnet to external objects, 
which it thus attracts. Medicines act by a magnetic 
force." f 

This Gabalistic force or art which produces by natural 
imagination and faith, " per ficlem naturalem ingenitam," 
all magical operations, and indeed all those wonderful 
changes that man can wish for in health or disease within 
his Microcosm, is descanted upon continually by Paracelsus. 
Man has two elements in his body, a sidereal and material 
element ; and this actual or sidereal part of him survives 
after death, and will explain the apparitions of the dead : 
but it is useless to again refer to his assertions, and, indeed, 
I may conclude with our chief literary historian, perhaps 
too much has been said about paradoxes so absurd and 
mendacious : but literature is a garden of weeds as well 

* Hallam, Literature of Europe, vol. iii. p. 599. 
t Sprengel, iii. 362, quoted also by Hallam. 



192 VABIA. 

as of flowers ; and Paracelsus forms a link in the history 
of opinion which should not be overlooked. 

Syllvesters, satyres, montans and ton nets, undens and 
melogens, vulcanals, salamanders, tumdel, and luperi, are 
now all laid, thank Heaven, to sleep, unless they shall be 
again brought into fashion by our modern rapparees. It 
needs this peep into mediaeval darkness to assure us that we 
live in an age of progress and of light. We have, like Lear 
in the storm, thrown off these fantastic lendings — these 
rags and remnants of the mythology which the Greeks 
and Romans left us. If Paracelsus believed in them, 
which we doubt, seeing that he was mystic above all 
things, he yet believed in mercury and laudanum, two 
of the most powerful props of modern medical science. 
He should be honoured, therefore, even whilst we recall, 
with Coleridge, the old belief in gnomes and spirits : — 

Oh, never rudely will I blame his faith 

In the might of stars and angels 

For still the heart doth need a language ; still 
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names, 
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth 
With man as with their friend ; and to the lover 
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky 
Shoot influence down : and even at this day 
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great, 
And Venus who brings everything that's fair. 

This poetical superstition seems just now to be flickering 
up for the last time, the same in spirit, but corporeally 
audible in knocks, cracks, and jumping chairs and tables. 
After all, until this dies out, it were better perhaps to go 



PARACELSUS. 193 

back to the unadulterated spirit-world of Paracelsus — to 
his Lemures, his Azoth, his Catholicon, and his Elixir Vita?. 

Referring to the death of Paracelsus, an author who 
is more picturesque and startling than his facts warrant 
him to he, tells us that Paracelsus " died, after a few 
hours' illness, with a bottle of his immortal Catholicon in 
his pocket." Of this statement nothing is known, save 
that the illness was not sudden. His will, executed St. 
Matthew's day, September 21st, 1541, says that the testa- 
tor is sick in body but sound in mind. It is dated from 
his chamber in the inn, the " White Horse," where he 
then resided. He is described as " the venerable and 
most learned Doctor Theophrastus ab Hohenheim." Ready 
money, rings, precious stones, plate, books, and clothes, 
some of the curiosities and antiquities gathered in his 
travels, made up the chief part of his property, which, with 
the exception of some legacies to his friends and nearest 
of kin, he ordered to be expended in charitable purposes ; 
and his executors carried out his wishes by bestowing it 
on the Hospital of St. Sebastian, in the precincts of which 
he desired to be buried. 

On a mural tablet in the chapel of the Hospital is the 
folio win o- memorial of the once famous doctor : — 



Condi tur hie 

PHILIPPUS THEOPHRASTUS, 

Insignis Medicinae Doctor, 

Qui 

dira ilia vulDera 

Lepram, Podagram, Hydropisin, 

o 



194 VARIA. 

aliaque insanabilia corporis eontagia 

mirifica arte sustulit; 

ac bona sua in pauperes collocanda 

distribuendaq : erogavit. 

Anno mdxxxxi. die xxiv. Septembris, 

vitam cum morte mutavit.* 

Possibly there is little in the history of the real Para- 
celsus to bear out the noble aspiration of Browning in his 
Ideal ; but there can be no question of the purity of that 
poet's ideal, nor of the beauty of the language in which it 
is apostrophized. The spirit of Bombast von Hohenheim 
must have been pleased by this address : — 

Men look up to the sun! 
For after-ages shall retrack thy beams, 
And put aside the crowd of busy ones, 
And worship thee alone — the master-mind, 
The thinker, the explorer, the creator ! 
I recognise thee first ; 

I saw thee rise, I watched thee early and late, 
And though no glance revealed thou dost accept 
My homage— thus no less I proffer it, 
And bid thee enter gloriously thy rest ! 

* It may be as well here to add the epigram on the engraving 
from which our portrait is taken. It was supplied by Christopher 
Manlius of Gorlitz, and may be received as a testimony to the 
fidelity of the painter,. just as Ben Jonson's lines on the Droeshout 
portrait of Shakespeare prove that its fidelity was as great as its 
art was small ; otherwise the epigram, especially the second verse, 
which we omit, is but a versification of names and dates. 

Stemmate nobilium genitus Paracelsus avorum, 
Qua vetus Helvetia claret Eremus humo : 

Sic oculos, sic or a tulit, cum plurima longum 
Discendi studio per loca fecit iter. 



w 



HOWELL THE TEAVELLEE. 



^^^ 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

EpistolcB Ho-Eliance; Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, divided 
into Four Books, partly Historical, Political, Philosophical, upon 
Emergent Occasions. By James Howell. 1688. 

Epistolce Ho-Eliance ; Familiar Letters, Domestic and Forren, His- 
torical, Political, and Phylosophical, upon Emergent Occasions. 
By James Howel, Esq., one of the Clerkes of His Majesties' Most 
Honourable Privy Council. 7th edition. 1705. 

Retrospective Review. Art. 1 . Howell's Familiar Letters. Vol. IV. 
Part 2. 1821. 




HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 

EPISTOL^E-HO-ELIAJSLE. 

EiBCHDEACON PALEY said that the best 
letter was that which came most directly to 
the purpose; and his definition is a sound 
one. The polite involutions, curious turns, 
quaint images, and hyperbolical compliments with which 
our grandfathers tickled the fancies of our grandmothers 
and great-aunts, should be, and luckily have been, swept 
away. Letter-writing to some is a pastime ; to many 
it is a passion. With ladies this passion soon grows into 
a disease, and when they are under its influence it is asto- 
nishing what long letters they will write upon the slightest 
subject, and how, if encouraged, a perennial spring of 
correspondence will gush from them. If suffering badly 
from this mania, they are always " gushing;" but since 
the disease would appear to be inevitable, it may be well 
that they should take it in the best possible form ; and, if 



198 VABIA. 

a doctor be careful of the virus he chooses for vaccination, 
surely we should be particular in the choice of the " Fa- 
miliar " letter writer from which our relatives first " take 
the venom of a lady's pen." Basing ourselves upon Paley's 
dictum, we may be somewhat astonished to find that, in an 
age of euphemistic periphrasis, James Howell arrived at 
once at the highest point of excellence. His familiar letters, 
on subjects the enumeration of even a few of which would 
occupy too much of our space, are models of what letters 
should be— humorous or serious, affectionate or severe, as 
the case may require, but practical, clear, concise, and 
always direct and to the point. There is something also 
very manly and delightful in their style ; and the reading, 
good-humour, and knowledge of life they display are 
immense. Hence, of upwards of forty different publica- 
tions by this clever travelled gentleman, his letters alone 
remain to us : and these are read again and again, each 
time with a greater zest and pleasure by the true lover of 
old literature. 

Travelling, in Howell's days, was as fashionable, if not 
as easy, an amusement as it is now. We leave it to the 
black letter critics to determine the important question 
whether Shakespeare had ever been to Scotland, or to 
Paris, or had u swum in a gondola." His descriptions of 
Italian scenery are sufficiently accurate to warrant the 
supposition that he had visited the latter country. But if 
he was not actually a traveller, the majority of the more 
fortunately born and richer gentlemen of his day were, as 
well as the poor scholars, who, mustering their few gold 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 199 

pieces, went afoot like William Lithgow, for " thirtie and 
sixe thousande of miles, perfitting his long nineteen years 
travel by surveying forty-eight kingdoms, twenty-one re- 
publics, ten absolute principalities, and two hundred 
islands/' said William, finishing his journeys (and being 
himself finished, poor fellow !) by torture at Malaga, where 
he was arrested as an English spy. Of greater education 
than he was a son of the Archbishop of York, William 
Sandys, an accomplished gentleman, scholar, and tra- 
veller ; to which titles James Howell also may lay claim. 
Born in Carmarthenshire in 1596 (one child of fifteen, as 
he tells us incidentally), Howell was educated at Hereford 
and Oxford, and repaired to London in 1617. There is 
abundant evidence that graduates of the Universities and 
gentlemen of good family were not averse to trade in 
that age; and, although the dramatists and courtiers 
satirized the citizens, still the sons of knights and noble- 
men sought employment of the merchants and chief traders 
for their sons. James Howell was appointed steward of 
a London glass factory, anj! in 1619 went abroad in 
that capacity to perfect his knowledge and engage " gentle- 
men workmen." He travelled till 1621, corresponding 
in the meantime with high dignitaries and noblemen (one 
of his brothers was Bishop of Bristol), and on his return 
still followed his stewardship. This connection of business 
with literature, which undoubtedly did him good, lasted for 
some time. Upon its cessation he became a travelling 
companion ; then a Government agent to Spain — where 
he was witness to " Babie's " and " Steenic's " romantic 



200 VABIA. 

attempt at a Spanish marriage. Next lie became Secre- 
tary to Lord Scrope as President of the North ; was then 
elected member for Richmond, in which post he remained 
nearly four years ; and afterwards went to Copenhagen 
as Secretary to the British Ambassador. In 1640 he 
was made Clerk of the Council by Charles I, and three 
years afterwards was, by the Parliament, imprisoned in 
the Fleet, where he maintained himself by translating and 
working for the booksellers. After the King's death he 
was released, and at the Restoration was made our first 
".historiographer royal," in which position he continued 
using his pen till the year of the great fire, 16.66, when 
he died. 

From so busy a life we should expect much ; and we are 
not disappointed. Howell's thick volume of upwards of 
five hundred pages is full of observation, and is as amusing 
as the essays of Montaigne. His letters are addressed 
to all sorts of people — to the King, Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury, Lady Digby, Secretary Conway, Sir Robert Mansell, 
Sir Sacvil Trevor, Captain Francis Bacon, Mr. Ben Jon son, 
Mr. Ed. Noy, and others. We are inclined to think that, 
with the method of a tradesman, he kept copies of all his 
letters ; for, although some assert that he compiled them 
from memory when in the Fleet, they are often too full of 
amusing trivialities, of local touch and colouring, the most 
evanescent of qualities — in short, have too great an air of 
freshness to have originated in any other manner. They 
are, as we have before hinted, supposed to be the earliest 
specimens of epistolary literature in our language. Howell's 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 201 

style seems to have been based upon tbe precept contained 
in his motto : — 

Ut clavis portara, sic pandit Epistola pectus ; 
Claudetur hsec cera, claudetur ilia sera. 

As keys do open chests, 
So Letters open breasts. 

He dedicates his letters to the King in a " Poem Koyal," 
dated Oalendis JanuarU, 1641, which contains some 
strong and excellent lines. He brings, he says : — 

No medals or rich stuff of Tyrian dye, 
No costly bowls of frosted argentry, 
No Roman perfumes, buffs, or cordovans 
Made drunk with amber by Moreno's hands. 

but something I will bring 
To handsel the new year to Charles, my King, 
And usher in bifronted Janus, — 

in a word, his book of letters. In his very first page he 
defines what an epistle should be, in one written to Sir J. 
S. (John Smith) at Leeds Castle : — 

" It was a quaint difference the ancients did put 'twixt 
a letter and an oration — that the one should be attir'd 
like a woman, the other like a man ; the latter of the two 
is allowed large side-robes, as long periods, parentheses, 
similes, examples, and other parts of rhetorical flourishes ; 
but a letter or epistle should be short-coated and closely - 
couch'd; a hungerlin [a short scanty coat] becomes a letter 
more handsomely than a gown. Indeed, we should write 
as we speak ; and that's a true familiar letter which expres- 
scth one's mind, as if he were discoursing with the party 



202 VARIA. 

to whom he writes in short and succinct terms. The 
tongue and the pen are both interpreters of the mind ; but 
I hold the pen to be the more faithful of the two. The 
tongue, in udo joosita, being seated in a moist slippery 
place, may fail and falter in her sudden extemporal ex- 
pressions ; but the pen, having the greater advantage of 
premeditation, is not so subject to error. Now, letters, 
though they be capable of any subject, are commonly 
either narratory, objurgatory , monitory, or congratula- 
tory. There are some who, in lieu of letters, write Ho- 
melies ; they preach when they should epistolize. There 
are others that turn them into tedious tractats ;. and others 
that must go fraighted with meer Bartholomew ware, with 
trite and trivial phrases only, lifted with pedantic shreds 
of schoolboy verses." 

Really, Mr. Howell must have been reading, by pro- 
phetic vision, some of the vacation and lady-tourists' 
letters which are now-a-days issued. He is equally se- 
vere on the elder Balzac and the letter-writers of our 
" transmarine " neighbours : " Loose flesh without sinews, 
simpering lank hectic expressions, a bombast of words 
made up of finical and affected compliments, I cannot away 
with such sleazy stuff;" and luckily he has backbone enough 
to prevent his committing the faults which he so ardently 
condemns. In an early epistle to his father he tells us that, 
had he remained steward of the glass-house in Broad 
Street, he should " have melted away to nothing amidst 
those hot Venetians." Captain Francis Bacon succeeded 
him in Broad Street, whilst Howell was taken into the 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 203 

employment of Sir Robert Mansell, who, with " my Lord 
of Pembrook and divers others of the Prime Lords of the 
Court, had got a sole patent for the making of glass from 
pit-coal, only to save the huge loads of wood formerly used 
in the furnaces." Here is the first hint of the improve- 
ment in the blast of our furnaces ; but it would seem that 
the patent did not succeed. In the same letter he tells 
us something of the rise of the haughty Buckingham : — 

" The new favorit Sir George Villiers tapers up a pace, 
and grows strong at Court. His predecessor, the Earl of 
Somerset, has got a lease of ninety years for his life, and 
so hath his Articulate lady ; so called, because she articu- 
lated against the frigidity and impotence of her former 
lord. [This was the notorious Countess of Somerset cele- 
brated in our State Trials.] She was afraid that Coke, 
the Lord Chief Justice, who had used extraordinary art 
and industry in discovering all the circumstances in the 
poysoning of Overbury, would have made white broth of 
them ; but the Prerogative kept them from the pot. Yet 
the subservient instruments, the lesser flies, could not 
break thorow ; amongst others, Mistriss Turner, the in- 
ventress of yellow starch, was executed in a cobweb lawn 
ruff of that colour at Tyburn, and with her, I believe, will 
disappear that yellow starch, which so much disfigured our 
nation and rendered them so ridiculous and fantastic." 

In the same letter Howell tells us of the execution of 
Sir Gervas Elway, Lieutenant of the Tower, who, on being 
hanged on Tower Hill as an accessory to the murder of 
Overbury, declared that the reason he suffered was through 



204 VARIA. 

a rash vow, for when in the Low Countries he swore an 
oath that he would not play above a certain sum. If he 
did, might he be hanged ! and hanged he was, surely 
enough. In chronicling a crime let us, when we can, 
append a virtue to it — that, for instance, of Lord William 
Pembrook, to whom the King gave all Sir Gervas Elway's 
estate (above a thousand per annum), and who at once 
bestowed it on the widow and her children. In a letter to 
Sir James Crofts, Howell tells us of the probable fate of Sir 
Walter Raleigh, who had just returned from " his myne 
in Guiana, which at first promised to be a hopeful boon 
voyage " (it is worth while remarking that we now use the 
last adjective with only one noun, i.e., companion), " but," 
adds the writer, " it seems that that golden myne is proved 
a meer chymcera, an imaginary airy myne ; indeed, His 
Majesty had never any other conceit of it." Howell 
wonders why Sir Walter ever came back to the clutches of 
his enemy, and tells an a projpos story of a king and his 
jester. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, is introduced 
in a wonderfully characteristic huffling, braggadocio way : — 

" Count Gondamar desired audience with His Majesty 
— he had but one word to tell him. His Majesty won- 
dering what might be delivered in one word, when he 
came before him, he said only Pyrats, Pyrats, Pyrats, 
and so departed." 

This Gondomar seems, like the Count von Bismarck, 
to have been a man of some humour. There is in Kirby 
Street, Hatton Garden, a public-house which retains the 
name of the " Hole in the Wall ;" and to antiquaries the 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 205 

memory of Lady Hatton is preserved in the street called 
Hatton Garden, close by. This proud lady, the wife of 
Sir Edward Coke, had thereat a wicket gate, which led 
from the garden into the fields beyond, leading to the 
village of Clerkenwell, its green and may-pole. Count 
Gondomar, who lived next door to Lady Hatton at Ely 
House, begged for a key to this private door, which the 
lady refused. " She/' says Howell, " put him off with a 
compliment ; " whereupon Gondomar, in a private audience 
with the King, exposed the whole affair, and more than 
hinted at the tyranny exercised by Lady Hatton on her 
cringing husband. " Lady Hatton," says he, " is a strange 
lady, for she will not suffer her husband, Sir Edward Coke, 
to come into her house at her front door, nor him, Gon- 
domar, to go out in the fields at her back door ; and so 
related the whole business." The smoke and dinginess 
of London, and the sickly glare of the sun therein as 
compared to Spain, are well hit off in a sentence by the 
witty Spaniard : — 

" He was despatching a Post lately to Spain, and the 
Post having received his packet, and kiss'd his hands, he 
call'd him back and told him he had forgot one thing, 
which was, that when he came to Spain, he should com- 
mend him to the sun, for he had not seen him a great 
while, and in Spain he should he sure to find him." 

Travelling to the Hague, Amsterdam, and Paris, 
Howell draws a picture of the latter which shows how 
little removed it was from a city of the middle ages. 
Its streets were close, mean, and dirty, except some few 



206 VARIA. 

new houses built of stone, and the Louvre, with its great 
gallery, wherein " the king might place 3,000 men in the 
very heart of this great mutinous city." The streets 
stank like those of Cologne, in Coleridge's epigram, and 
were so narrow that two coaches or carts passing would 
create a block. The mud was so black and greasy (filled 
with oyl, says Howell) that no washing could cleanse it 
from some colours ; so that an ill name, he says, is like 
the crot of Paris, indelible. The stench of Paris might 
be perceived with the wind in one's face many miles off. 
At night-time the city was full of thieves ; by which the 
lives of night travellers -were constantly endangered : — 

" Coming late to our lodgings (near the Bastille) a crew 
of Filous or night rogues surpriz'd and drew on us, and 
we exchanged some blows. It pleased God that the Cheva- 
lier du Guet (a night patrol) came by and so rescued us ; 
but Jaclc White was hurt, and I had two thrusts in my 
cloake. There's never a night passes by but some rob- 
bery or murder is committed in this town." 

In a subsequent letter Howell relates the assassination 
of King Henry IV. by Eavaillac, and the horrid tortures 
to which that wretch was put. 

It is Henry, says Howell, who amassed a heap of gold 
as high as a lance, and who levied a huge army of 40,000 
men, " whence comes the saying, the King of France 
with forty thousand men." Of course, Howell did not 
see the murder of the king, but he relates it circumstan- 
tially and minutely, as from the lips of an eye-witness, a 
French friend of his. 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 207 

" Going to the Bastile to see his treasure and ammu- 
nition, his coach stopped suddenly, by reason of some col- 
liers and other carts that were in that street ; whereupon 
one Mav iliac, a lay Jesuit (who had a whole twelvemonth 
watched an opportunity to do the act), put his foot boldly 
upon one of the wheels of the coach, and with a long 
knife stretched himself over their shoulders who were in 
the hoot of the coach, and reached the king at the end, 
and stabb'd him right in the left side to the heart, and, 
pulling out the fatal steel, he doubl'd his thrust. The king, 
with a ruthful voice, cri'd 'Je suis blesse ' (I am hurt), and 
suddenly the Blood issued out of his mouth : the Eegicide 
villain was apprehended, and command given that no 
violence should he offered him, that he might he reserved 
for the Law and some exquisite Torture. The Queen 
grew half distracted here upon, who had been crown'd 
Queen of France the day before in great triumph ; but a 
few days after she had something to countervail, if not 
overmatch, her sorrow ; for, according to St. Lewis's law, 
she was made Queen Regent of France during the king's 
minority, who was then but about ten years of age. Many 
consultations were held how to punish Ravillac, and there 
were some Italian physicians that undertook to prescribe 
a torment that should last a constant torment for three 
days ; but he 'scaped only with this. His body was pull'd 
between four horses, that one might hear his bones crack, 
and after dislocation they were set again, and so he was 
carried in a cart half naked, with a torch in that hand 
which had committed the murder, and in the place where 



208 VARIA. 

the act was done it was cut off, and a Gauntlet of hot Oyl 
was clapped on the place to staunch the blood, whereat he 
gave a doleful shriek ; then was he brought upon a stage, 
when a new pair of boots was provided for him, half filled 
with boyling Oyl, then his Body was pincered, and hot 
Oyl poured into the holes. In all the extremity of this 
torture he scarce shewed any sense of pain but when the 
gauntlet was clap'd upon his arm to staunch the flux, at 
which time of reaking blood he gave a shrike only. He 
bore up against all these Torments for about three hours 
before he died. All the confession that could be drawn 
from him was, That he thought to have done God good 
Service, to take away that king which would have em- 
broiled all Chrestendom in an endless War." 

Arrived at Venice, he found there " the best gentlemen 
workmen that ever blew crystal," and was aided, in his 
attempt to get some of these gentlemen workmen to 
England, by Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambas- 
sador and the author of two famous mots. The first was 
a retort to a Venetian nobleman, who had asked him 
" where the Protestant religion was before the Refor- 
mation." " Signor," said he, " where was your face 
this morning before it was washed ?" The second is the 
celebrated definition of an ambassador — " A gentleman 
sent to lie abroad for the good of his country." Howell 
praises Venice glass exceedingly. The makers thereof 
were gentlemen ipso facto, and, after their work, dressed 
in silks and buckled on their swords like the gallants 
painted by Vandyke ; but the lasses and glasses of Venice, 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 209 

Howell says, were alike brittle. Venice, he adds, was so 
clean that it might be walked " in a Silk Stokin and Sat- 
tin Slippers ;" and with these and other of his observa- 
tions he mingles story, history, and philosophical remark 
in a very charming way. 

Howell, when in London, appears to have lived very 
close to Ben Jonson, in Westminster, near Tothill Fields ; 
for, from the pleasant gardens there, we find him in July, 
1629, sending to Sir Arthur Ingram " a hamper of me- 
lons, the best that I could anywhere find of Tothill Fields 
gardens." Sir Arthur had asked Howell to stay some 
time with him at his noble new house at Temple Newsam. 
In thanking him for this courteous invitation our familiar- 
letter writer anticipates Joe Miller in one of his very 
^ound old jests, which he sets down to a Norfolk country- 
man who had a " sute " before Sir Edward Coke, who, 
asking him how he called a certain river, answered, " My 
lord, I need not call her, for she is forward enough to 
come of herself." " So I may say that you need not call 
me to any house of yours, for I am forward enough to come 
without calling." In the next extract, a letter which we 
give whole to show fully Howell's style, we learn that Ben 
Jonson narrowly escaped being burnt out of house and 
home. In it he addresses rare Ben, as did many of his 
contemporaries, as his poetical sire. 

" To my Father Mr. Ben Jonson. 

"Father Ben, — Nullum sit magnum ingenium sine 
mixtura dementia, there's no great wit without some mix- 

p 



210 VARIA. 

ture of madness, so saith the philosopher ; nor was he a 
fool that answered, nee jparvum sine mixtura stultitice, nor 
small wit without some allay of foolishness. Touching 
the first, it is verified in you, for I find that you have bin 
often mad when you writ your Fox, and madder when 
you writ your Alchemist; you were mad when you writ 
your Catilin, and stark mad when you writ Sejanus ; but 
when you writ your Epigrams and the Manetick Lady 
you were not so mad : insomuch that I perceive there are 
degrees of madness in you. Excuse me that I am so free 
with you. The madness I mean is that divine Fury, 
that heating and heightening spirit which Ovid speaks of. 

" Est deus in nobis, agitante calesscimus illo : that true 
enthusiasm which transports and elevates the souls of 
poets above the middle region of vulgar conceptions, and 
makes them soar up to heaven and touch the stars with 
their laurelled heads, to walk in the Zodiac with Apollo 
himself, and command Mercury upon their errand. 

" I cannot yet light upon Dr. Davies his Welsh Gram- 
mar; before Christmas I am promised one. So, desiring 
you to look better hereafter to your charcoal fire and 
chimney, which I am glad to be one that preserved it 
from burning, this being the second time that Vulcan has 
threatened you — it may be because you have spoken ill of 
his wife, and been too busy with his horns — I rest, Tour 
son and contiguous neighbour, J. H. 

"Westminster, 27 June, 1629." 

We have little space left ; but it is hard to part with 
a pudding from which so many plums may be picked. 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 211 

Howell has always plenty to say. He will tell you a 
facetious tale of a " Porter/' or an anecdote about the 
" Election of Pope," or will discourse on the " Chemistry 
of Glass/' " The Excise/' " Prayer and Praise/' " Auto- 
logy/' " Of a hideous serpent lately found in a young 
gentleman's heart in Holborn/' " Of Wiving," " Of Peter 
Yan Heyn's mighty Plate Prize/' " Of what befel Wal- 
stein [Wallenstein] in Germany last year :" " All sorts of 
Stories." He writes of "William Lily, the astrologer, of 
the death of Mr. Attorney-General 1ST oy, of that of Lord 
Bacon, and several times to his poetic or mental father, 
Ben Jonson, " dear father Ben," who was of a rugged 
but fine nature, and too often 

At the Sun, 

The Dogge or triple Tun — 

as full of drink as of the poetic afflatus. We cannot pass 
without extracting Howell's epitaph on Jonson, and part 
of his letter to the Lord Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Duppa, 
on Ben's death. " My Lord/' he writes, " It is well 
becoming and very worthy that you are about not to suffer 
Mr. Ben Jonson to go so silently to his grave or rot so 
suddenly. Being newly come to town, and understanding 
that your Johnsonus Virbius was in the press, upon the 
solicitation of Sir Thomas Hawkins, I suddenly fell upon 
the insuing Decastich, which, if your Lordship please, may 
have room among the rest. 

Upon my honoured Friend and F., Mr. Ben Jonson. 

A ND is thy glass run out, is that oyl spent 

Which light to such strong sinewy labours lent? 



212 VARIA. 

Well, Ben, I now perceive that all the Nine, 
Though they their utmost forces should combine, 
Cannot prevail 'gainst Night's three daughters, but 
One still must Spin, one Wind, the other Cut. 
Yet, in despight of distaff e, clue and knife, 
Thou in thy strenuous lines hast got a life, 
Which like thy Bays shall flourish ev'ry age, 
While Soc or Buskin shall attend the stage. 

Sic Vaticinatur Hoellus." 

He writes a long letter on the death of the King, and 
tells us that the city was much " annoyed at the Court 
huying the mourning all in white cloth, and having it dyed 
black." This was a shrewd stroke of business, owing, 
we should guess, to the citizens having, on the proximate 
death of the Sovereign, bought up all the black cloth, so 
as to monopolize it, and charge their own price. 

Howell always writes well, and perhaps never better than 
when he gives an account of his daily life. In his index he 
calls this narration the " Self-travel of one of the Wayes 
that lead us to Heaven." 

" Though there be rules and rubrics in our Liturgy suf- 
ficient to guide us in the performance of all holy duties, 
yet I believe every one hath some mode, or model, or 
formulary of his own especially for his private or cubicular 
devotions; for myself, on Saturday evening I fast, on 
which I have fasted ever since I was a youth, for being 
delivered from a very great danger. On Sunday morning 
I rise earlier, to prepare myself for the sanctifying of it ; 
nor do I use barber, taylor, shoe-maker, or any other 
mechanic that morning. Whatever lets may hinder me 



HOWELL TEE TRAVELLER. 213 

the week before, I never miss, but in case of sickness, to 
repair to God's bouse tbat day before prayers begin, and 
to prepare myself by previous meditation to take the whole 
service with me. I prostrate myself in the humblest and 
decentest way of genuflexion I can imagine ; nor do I be- 
lieve there can be any excess of exterior humility in that 
place, therefore I do not like unseemly squatting, bold 
postures on one's tail, or muffling one's face ivith one's 
hat, but with bended knee I fix my eyes on the East part 
of the church and on Heaven. ... I endeavour to 
apply every tittle of the service to myself, to the service of 
my own conscience ; and I believe the want of this, with 
the huddling and careless reading of some ministers, make 
many undervalue and take a surfeit (i. e. at the length) 
of our public service. For the reading and singing of 
Psalms, whereas most of them are either petitions or 
Eucharistical ejaculations, I listen to them more attentively 
and make them my own : when I stand at the Creed, 
I think upon the custom they have in Poland, and else- 
where, for gentlemen to draw their swords all the while, 
intimating thereby they will defend it with their lives and 
blood : and for the Decalogue, where others rise, I even 
kneel in the humblest and trembling'st posture of all, 
craving remission for the breaches of God's holy com- 
mandments. I love a holy and devout sermon, that first 
checks and then chears the conscience, that begins with 
the law and ends with the Gospel, but I never prejudicate 
or judge any preacher, taking him as I find him. 

" And now that we are not only adulted bat ancient 



214 VAEIA. 

Christians, I believe the most acceptable sacrifice we can 
send up to Heaven is Prayer and Praise, and that Ser- 
mons are not so essential as either of them to the true 
practice of devotion. The rest of the holy sabbath, I 
sequester mj body and my mind as much as I can from 
worldly affairs. 

"Upon Monday morn I have a particular prayer of 
thanks ; and every day I knock thrice at Heaven's gate, 
besides prayers at meals, and other occasional ejaculations, 
as upon the putting on of a clean shirt, washing my hands, 
and lighting the candles. Upon Wednesday night I 
fast and perform some extraordinary acts of devotion, 
as also upon Friday night, and on Saturday morn 
when, as soon as my senses are unlocked, I am up. And 
in the summer time I am often up abroad, in some private 
field, there to attend the rising of the sun ; and as I pray 
thrice a day, so I fast thrice a week. Before I go to bed 
I make a scrutiny of what peccant humours have reigned 
in me that day, and strike a tally in Heaven's Exchequer 
for my quietus est, ere I close my eyes, and so leave no 
burden on my conscience. I use not to rush madly into 
prayer Difference in opinion may work a disaf- 
fection in me, not a detestation. I rather pity than hate 
a Turk or an Infidel, for they are of the same metal, and 
bear the same stamp as I do, though the inscriptions 
differ. If I hate any, it is those schismatics that puzzle 
the sweet peace of our Church. I thank God that I have 
this fruit of my foreign travels, that I can pray unto him 
every day in the week in a several language, and upon 



HOWELL THE TRAVELLER. 215 

Sunday in seven, which in orisons of iny own I punctu- 
ally perform in my private Pomeridian devotions : — 

Et sic aeternam contendo attingere vitam." 

Few men will quarrel with such a method of doing 
God service, which is surely a peaceful and Christian 
one. Serious and calm writing like this strongly reminds 
us of the best passages in Sir Thomas Browne's " Beligio 
Medici." 



The letter just quoted is dated July, 1635. It re- 
sembles Sir Thomas Browne's style so much that one may 
doubt whether Howell had not seen the MS. of the 
" Beligio Medici," which in that year was written, or, it 
may be, was written before and circulated in manuscript. 
It was not given to the world until 1642. Dr. Johnson 
says, " About the year 1634, he (Sir Thomas Browne) is 
supposed to have returned to London, and the next year 
to have written his celebrated treatise called ' Beligio 
Medici,' the religion of a physician, which he declares 
himself never to have intended for the press. Dr. Kippis, 
says Simon Wilkin in a note on this passage, seems to 
have proved that ' Beligio Medici' was written in 1635. 
In Wilkin's additional memoir of Browne we are told that 
he returned to England after having obtained his degree 
of M.D. at Ley den, in 1633. He then returned at once 
to England, and settled as a physician at Shepden Hall, 
near Halifax, where he had enforced leisure enough to 
meditate upon his past life and to write the ' Beligio Me- 



216 



VAEIA. 



clici,' one of the fairest monuments of the English mind." 
If this were so, and in 1634 the MS. was in circulation 
amongst literary people, it is possible Howell, the friend 
of Ben Jonson, looked at it and, intentionally or uninten- 
tionally, reproduced its style. 




MICHAEL SCOT. 



>=d^ 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

Debrio. Disquisitiones Magicce, Proloquium. Moguntise, 1612. 

Bayle. Dlctionnaire historique et critique, revu par Prosp. Marchand. 
Rotterdam, 1720. 

Scot, Michael. Liber physiognomies. Opuscula. Lyons, 1531. 

Scott, Sir Walter. Lay of the Last Minstrel (Notes to). 

Dante. Tutte le Opere di Dante, con varie annot. e copiosi rami, fyc. 
dal Conte Don Christ. Zapata de Cisneros. In Venetia, 1757. 

Dante, Translated by Henry Cary. 





MICHAEL SCOT. 

JMONGST those who have obtained a very 
great fame upon an unsolid foundation/' 
says a modern writer, " Michael Scot holds 
a very distinguished place." Hallam, who 
appears to have read everything, and to have neglected 
nothing, has very little about him, and that little is un- 
satisfactory, to his friends at least. It is contained in a 
note in Hallam's first volume, and here it is : " Michael 
Scot, i the Wizard of dreaded fame,' pretended to translate 
Aristotle, but is charged with having appropriated the 
labours of one Andrew, a Jew, as his own." Scot's fame 
was, therefore, purchased at little expense, for his singular 
learning in Greek, or rather the reputation of it, imposed 
upon many people. 

We have seen, in the article on Faustus, that Coleridge 
had intended to write a drama upon Michael Scot after 
the manner of " Faust." It is well that he did not carry 
out his determination with so knavish a hero, for even 
biographers of his own country can scarcely keep their 



220 VABIA. 

hands from belabouring him, and, groping in the dark- 
ness of mediaeval literature, are evidently enraged to find 
that the heroic figure described by Sir Walter, the great 
magician and learned man to whom even Lord Eldon was 
proud to trace his ancestry,* is a mere windbag, a charla- 
tan, a fellow of vast pretensions, possessed of the slenderest 
basis of support, the smallest nucleus of reality, round 
which is wound the biggest possible ball of hypothesis, 
conjecture, and fable. 

The celebrated and poetical character who grew up to 
be regarded as 

A wizard of such dreaded fame, 
That when in Salamanca's cave 
Him listed his magic wand to wave, 

The bells would ring in N6tre-Dame, 

was born in an era particularly well adapted for the growth 



* " When the late Lord Eldon was elevated to the peerage, the 
arms of the Scots of Balwearie were added to his own ; and we are 
told that the Lord Chancellor felt a pride in his descent from the 
renowned Scottish magician. As nothing but modern evidence is 
produced in support of this connection of Michael with any family 
now in existence, we may be allowed to withhold belief from this 
story. The members of ancient families are always willing to con- 
nect their pedigree with some man of intelligence in past times, . . 
If Michael had been a poor philosopher living in Lord Eldon's own 
day, the prudent Chancellor would have taken particularly good 
care not to have given him a sixpence to buy bread with ; but the 
son of the Newcastle coal merchant was willing enough to attest 
the antiquity of his own extraction by counting kin with a cele- 
brated man of the thirteenth century." — Lives of Eminent Men of 
Fife. 



MICHAEL SCOT. 221 

of an empiric fame. Michael the Scotsman, Scotus, is 
certainly claimed as a Scotsman, and is inserted amongst 
the celebrated men of Fife by Mr. James Bruce, who 
does not seem very well pleased with him for being a 
Scotsman at all. But he is also claimed as an English- 
man. Leland asserts that he was English, and Ball and 
Pitts, who both quote Leland, and cannot therefore be 
taken as authorities, assert the same thing. They also, 
says Mr. Bruce, indignantly claim " Duns Scotus as an 
Englishman;" and, indeed, there is better authority for 
Anglicising Duns than Michael. We take it, however, 
that the primary and very heavy proof that Duns and 
Michael were both Scots is that they were called so. 
When Leland quotes a passage from an unpublished trea- 
tise of Bacon, wherein the names of " Gerardus Cremo- 
nensis, Michael Scotius, Alwredus Anglicanus, Herman- 
nus Alemannus " occur, we feel that there is no reason to 
disturb the distinctive titles given to each. Let Hermann 
be a German and Michael a Scotsman by all means, even 
though Leland does say that the magician was born and 
educated in the county of Durham. What does it 
matter ? 

At Balwearie, in the close neighbourhood of Baith, 
now in the parish of Abboteshall, Michael was born in 
1214 — so many authorities tell us ; but as, in 1230, Koger 
Bacon says that certain portions of Aristotle's writings 
(librorum Aristotelis partes aliquas de naturalibus et 
mathematicis) had become known through the translation 
of Michael Scot, it seems evident that his birth should 



222 VAB1A. 

be placed earlier, perhaps as far back as 1200 or 1190. 
He flourished as the astrologer to the Emperor Frederic 
II. in 1233, and was contemporary with our Henry III, 
Louis VIII. of France, and Alexander II. of Scotland, 
and it is firstly to his (?) translation of Aristotle and the 
fame acquired thereby that he owed his elevation to the 
service of Frederic, and secondly to his astrological predic- 
tions that he owes his present fame and enduring celebrity. 
Of a roving and curious disposition, the son of a poor 
Scottish knight, Scot crossed the border and resided for 
some time at Oxford, to perfect himself in the learning of 
the day. He went to Paris and studied there, and after 
some time made his appearance at Padua, where he lec- 
tured on astrology. He seems to have been born a 
favourite of literary men, and to have been accepted in that 
learned city, not as a mere pupil in, but as a master of, 
the art of magic. Boccaccio introduced his name to his 
thousands of readers, and calls him a great master of 
necromancy ; aud when once thus placed, it is evident that 
his fame was made. In the eighth day, and the ninth 
novel of the " Decameron," there is an amusing story 
of two painters, Messires Bruno and Buffalmacco, who, 
under the pretext of introducing one Master Simon, a 
physician, into a gay society, throw him into a cesspool, 
where they leave him to get out as he best can. It is in 
speaking to Master Simon of the society which they fre- 
quent, of course a fictitious one, that the painters introduce 
the name Michael. " After having sworn the physician to 
secrecy, ' You must know,' continued Bruno, ' that twelve 



MICHAEL SCOT. 223 

or thirteen years ago there arrived in this town a famous 
necromancer called Michael Scot, because he was from 
Scotland, (the French translator prints it Michael Leseot).* 
He was received with very great honours and distinction 
by the best known gentlemen of Florence, who now are 
almost all dead. And when he left this place, he left also 
at their solicitation two of his disciples, whom he com- 
manded to render to those gentlemen, who had so well 
received him, all those services which depended upon them 
and their art. These two necromancers served 'the said 
nobles, not only in their affairs of gallantry, but also in 
other things, and became so accustomed to the climate, 
that they determined to fix their residence here. They 
bound themselves by ties of friendship to several persons 
of character and personal merit, without inquiring whether 
they were noble or roturiers, poor or rich, and these out 
of regard for their two friends, formed a little society, of 
about five and twenty men, who assemble together twice 
a month in a place they themselves have previously 
named." ? t 

One needs not to say, since the story is by Boccaccio, 
that the Society meets for the most immoral purpose. 
Courtesans of the greatest beauty and of the highest rank 
are there to enjoy these gay feasts with them ; indeed the 



* " Egli non ha ancora guari, che in questa citta fu un gran 
maestro in negronianzia, il quale ebbe nome Michele Scotto, percio 
che di Scozia era." — Boccaccio, Dec. Giorn. viii. Nov. ix. 

t BOCCACCIO, Decameron^ Giorn. Ottava, Novella IX. 



224 VABIA. 

magic of the necromancers summoned these from the most 
distant parts of the earth. If the persons were two thou- 
sand leagues off, the potent magic taught by Michael Scot 
could compel them to come in two minutes. Bruno gives 
to these grand ladies some grand names. " There is/' 
he tells the simple physician, who is in the end rightly 
punished for his wicked desires, " the Lady of Barbanico, 
the Queen of Basque, the wife of the Sultan, the Empress 
of Osbeck, the Schinchimurro of Prester- John, the Chian- 
Chianfere of Norway, the Semistance of Berlinson, and 
the Scalpedre of Narsia." But Bruno was highly favoured 
as w T ell as his friend, the favourite mistress of the first 
being the Queen of England, while Buffalmacco pos- 
sessed the favours of the Queen of France. 

It will be useless to follow this tale to its catastrophe, 
which is in the usual style of Boccaccio. The story was 
written about one hundred years after our hero had been 
in Florence, and shows that his fame as a magician sur- 
vived. Scot was, however, the hero not only of the jovial 
tale but the mystic romance, so much so, that Dante 
thought fit to introduce him in the Inferno, canto xx. 

Quel? altro che ne' fianchi e cosi poco 
Michele Scotto fu, che veramente 
Delle raagiche frodo seppe il giucco. 

This portrait of him, very vividly rendered by Cary, is 
extremely Dantesque. We see the man, thin and girt 
round the loins, broad in his shoulders for his size, but 
weird and wild looking and small in his flanks. There is, 
it is said, a portrait of him, on vellum, amongst the 6a- 



MICHAEL SCOT. 225 

nonici MSS. in the Bodleian, and this agrees with Dante's 
vigorous lines. The poet has placed the necromancer in 
the eighth circle with others because they had presumed 
to practise divination and astrology. Upon Dante in- 
quiring who the spirits were, they are thus introduced by 
his guide : — 

That spirit, from whose cheek 
The beard sweeps o'er his shoulders brown, what time 
Grsecia was emptied of her males, that scarce 
The cradles were supplied, the seer was he 
In Aulis, who, with Calchas, gave the sign 
When first to cut the cable. Him they named 
Eurypilus : so sings my magic strain, 
In which majestic measure well thou knowest, 
Who know'st it all. That other round the loins 
So slender of his shape, was Michael Scot, 
Practised in every sleight of magic will. 

Slender, short, dark-haired, and weird in look, Michael 
might well pass for a wizard. We are told, in certain 
Macaronic verses, published in 1519, that he was won- 
derfully clever in philtres and sorceries that could secure 
the love of women. He could also " call devils from the 
vasty deep," ride on an enchanted horse, wrap his small 
figure round in an invisible cloak, sail in a ship without 
rudder, sails, or other motive power but that with which 
he supplied it, and walk about, like Peter Schlimmel, 
without the inconvenience or convenience of a shadow. 

" He has been placed," says Bayle, in his article 
Scotus, " in the catalogue of magicians, and we are told 
that he frequently invited several people to dine with 
him without providing anything for them ; but when his 



226 VAEIA. 

guests sat down to table he forced the spirits to bring him 
meat from all parts; and when it was come he told the 
company, ' Gentlemen, this comes from the kitchen of 
the King of France, and this from the kitchen of the 
King of Spain; this comes from England,' &c. The 
poet Dante adopted the common error." Here Bayle 
quotes the lines I have given, and adds that " John Bacon, 
an English Carmelite and the Prince of the Averroists, is 
more to be credited; he quotes Michael Scotus as a 
great divine. Pitseus, who commends him very much, is 
also a more credible author. This Pitseus is the Pitts 
who claims Scot as an Englishman, and who says, that, 
though Michael was accounted a magician by the mob 
and the ignorant people, wise men passed another judg- 
ment on him.* " However," concludes Bayle, in his very 
short notice, " 'tis said that this pretended magician fore- 
saw that he should die, and foretold the place where the 
Emperor Frederic should lose his life." 

But it was, after all, not by magic but by astrology that 
Michael foretold the death of his patron. Probably, in 
reference to this circumstance, and certainly to the science 
of astrology, our good Martin Luther once gave the fol- 
lowing opinion, which is so sound and wise that modern 
science can add nothing to it, and which should, at least 
with all Lutherans, have set at rest any belief in as- 
trology. 

In the year 1538, the Seigneur Von Minckwitz made 

* Prudentum tamen et cordatorum hominum longe aliud fuit 
judicium. 



MICHAEL SCOT. 227 

a public oration in honour of astrology, wherein he 
sought to prove that the sentence in Jeremiah, chap, x, 
" Be not dismayed at the signs of heaven/' applied not 
to astrology, hut to the images of the Gentiles. Luther 
said hereupon, " These passages may be quibbled with, 
but not overthrown. Jeremiah speaks, as Moses did, of 
all the signs of heaven, earth, and sea; the heathen were 
not so silly as to be afraid of the sun or moon, but they 
feared and adored prodigies and miraculous signs. As- 
trology is no art ; it has no principle, no demonstration 
whereupon we may take sure footing ; 'tis all haphazard 
work. Philip Melancthon, against his will, admits unto 
me, that though, as he says, the art is extant, there are 
none that understand it rightly. They set forth, in their 
almanacs, that we shall have no snow in summer time, no 
thunder in winter ; and this the country clowns know as 
well as the astrologers. 

" Philip Melancthon says : ' That such people as are 
born in ascendente Libra, in the ascension of Liber, 
towards the south, are unfortunate people.' Whereupon 
I said, c The astrologers are silly creatures, to dream 
that their crosses and mishaps proceed not from God, but 
from the stars ; 'tis hence they are not patient in their 
troubles and adversities.' 

" Astrology is uncertain, and as the predicamenta 
are feigned words in dialectica, even so astronomy has 
feigned astrology ; as the ancient and true divines knew 
nothing of the fantasies and divinity of the school- 
teachers, so the ancient astronomers knew nothing of 



228 VAEIA. 

astrology. The nativities of Cicero and of others were 
shown me. I said, ' I hold nothing thereof, nor attri- 
bute anything unto them. I would gladly have the 
astrologers answer me this : Esau and Jacob were born 
together, of one father and one mother, at one time, and 
under- equal planets, yet they were wholly of contrary 
natures, kinds, and minds.' 

" What is done by God ought not to be ascribed to the 
stars. The upright and true Christian religion opposes 
and confutes all such fables. The way of casting na- 
tivities is like the proceedings in Popedom, whose outward 
ceremonies and pompous ordinances are pleasing to hu- 
man wit and wisdom, as the consecrated water, torches, 
organs, cymbals, singing, ringing, but withal there's no 
certain knowledge. 

" An astrologer or horoscope-monger is like one that 
sells dice and. balls. ' Behold, here I have dice that 
always come up to 12.' If once or twice their conjectures 
tell, they cannot sufficiently extol the art ; but as to the 
infinite cases where they fail, they are altogether silent. 

" Astronomy, on the contrary, I like ; it pleases me 
by reason of her (sic) manifold benefits. 

" General prophecies and declarations which declare 
generally what in future shall happen, accord not upon 
individuals and particular things. 

" When, at one time, many are slain in battle, no man 
can affirm that they are born under one planet, yet they 
die altogether in one hour, yea in one moment."* 

* Luther, Colloquia Mensalia. 



MICHAEL SCOT. 229 

These two points, of the many slain in battle, and of 
the birth of Esau and Jacob, would, no doubt, be easily 
met by modern astrologers, let us say Lieutenant Morri- 
son, but they are, in fact, irrefragable. However, in 
Scot's time there were many who believed in the false 
science, if he himself did not. The story of his feasting 
his friends from the tables of the various kings of Europe 
may have been the foundation of the more wonderful 
story of producing queens and beautiful ladies from the 
same places, as Boccaccio tells us, for the position of 
England and France are in both stories about the same. 
But Scot certainly gave vent to various prophecies which 
came true, or, like those of Nostradamus, were twisted 
into something like their realization. Thus Villain tells 
us that " Master Michael Scot" said of Padua, a long 
time before it happened, " Paduce magnatum plorabunt 
filii necem diram et horrendam, datam catuloque Vero- 
nam" " The sons of Padua will weep the dire and 
horrid slaughter of her nobles, and Verona will be given 
to the dog," which was, of course, fulfilled when El Can 
Grande, the great dog, entered Verona. 

With the pretended prediction of the death of his 
patron Frederic, a man — as it is more than probable 
Michael was himself — given to licentious pleasures, the list 
of the wizard's prophecies may be closed. It will be 
noticed by the reader that all these pretended prophetic 
utterances are of the same family, capable of the widest 
interpretation, and, if they do not prove true at one time, 
are warranted to keep fresh for a few years ; or if the 



230 VARIA. 

place be mentioned whereat a death is to take place, we 
find names are suddenly changed to suit the occurrence. 
Thus Michael Scot is said to have predicted that his 
patron should die at the iron gates in Florence, whereon 
the Emperor resolved to enter that town. But according 
to Francisco Pepino the prophecy came true in this way. 
" In the last day, therefore, of his life, when he was sick 
at Samnio, in a town the name of which was Florentinum, 
a bed was made for him in a chamber beside the walls of 
the tower, w^hich the head of the bed touched. The gate 
of the town in the wall was built up, but the iron posts 
remained within. The Emperor caused the tower to be 
examined to see what it was like inside. It was told him 
that in that part of the wall where he lay there was a gate 
with iron posts shut up. Hearing this, he began to 
meditate and said, 6 This is the place of my decease already 
foretold to me. Here shall I die. God's will be done.'"* 

The story, according to Muratori, has the appearance of 
a lie, told probably of Frederic because he never did enter 
Florence. The prediction is after all one made by a pal- 
tering fiend, taking it at its best, and allowing both it and 
its fulfilment to be true. A prophecy which is twisted into 
a true solution in that manner is worth very little to 
any one. 

It is curious that a similar story is told of one of our 
kings, Henry IV, and that it has been used with admirable 



* Chron. F. Francisci Pipini, cap. xl ; apud Muratori, quoted 
also by Mr. James Bruce. 



MICHAEL SCOT. 231 

effect by Shakespeare. King Henry, historians tell us, was 
praying before the shrine of Edward the Confessor in 
Westminster Abbey, when he was seized with a fit. His 
attendants carried him to the apartments of the abbot, and 
he lay down to die in the Jerusalem chamber, the name of 
which is said to have recalled an old prophecy, with the 
notion that he had once entertained that he should make 
an attempt for the recovery of the holy city. It is prob- 
able that the visit of Michael Paleologus to ^France and 
England, to beg aid of the western monarchs against 
Bajazet and the Turks, may have suggested to the 
vigorous king the notion of resuscitating the almost for- 
gotten crusades, and that the prophecy was vented to hin- 
der him from the undertaking. Shakespeare, who omits 
the praying at the shrine, makes Henry swoon when, at his 
council, after a time he asks : — 

King. Doth any name particular belong 

Unto the lodging where I first did swoon ? 

War. Tis called Jerusalem, my noble Lord. 

King. Laud be to Heaven ! even there my life must end. 
It hath been prophesied to me many years, 
I should not die but in Jerusalem ; 
Which vainly I suppos'd the Holy Land : — 
But bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie ; 
In that Jerusalem shall Harry die."-* 

He did in effect die in the Jerusalem chamber at West- 
minster Abbey on the 20th March, 1413, in the forty- 
seventh year of his reign. 

* King Henry IV, Part II, Act iv, Scene iv. 



232 VARIA. 

To return to Michael Scot. According to traditional 
history he left the court of the Emperor Frederic before 
the end of that monarch's reign, and, arriving in England, 
was hospitably received by Edward I. But chronology 
would make this twenty years after the death of Frederic, as 
Edward was crowned in 1271. He then went to Scotland, 
and was sent to Norway in 1290 to bring over, as one of the 
ambassadors, the Princess Margaret. On his return to 
Scotland he took up his residence there, the scenes of his 
magic feats being partly in Ettrick and in Roxburghshire. 
One version of the manner of his death is that it took place 
while he was engaged in devotional exercises;, but Sir 
Walter tells a different story, and one that might have 
suggested to Tennyson his very beautiful and exquisitely 
pictured scene between Vivien and Merlin. " His wife or 
concubine elicited from him a secret, that his art could 
warn off any danger except the poisonous qualities of broth 
made of the flesh of a breme sow. Such a mess was accord- 
ingly administered to the wizard, who died in consequence 
of eating it; surviving, however, long enough to put 
to death his treacherous confidante." 

He was buried, some people say, at Melrose, where it 
suits Sir Walter to place his grave, others assert that the 
wizard rests at Home Coltrame, in Cumberland. The be- 
lief in his magic continued long ; so late as the year 1614, 
when George Sempill, minister of Killelau, was tried 
before the Presbytery of Glasgow, for practising magic, it 
was brought forward as evidence against the unhappy man, 
and deposed to by one John Huchesoun, one of the bail- 



MICHAEL SCOT. 233 

lies of Paisley, that he had seen George Sempill buy an 
Albertus Magnus, and that he had in his possession and 
frequently read a book of unlawful arts by Michael Scot. 
It may be, indeed, that this book was the cause of Sempill's 
prosecution. 

Besides the fame recently acquired by Michael in con- 
sequence of Sir Walter Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
the wizard was again called into prominent notice by a 
romance by Allan Cunninghame, bearing his name, 
" Michael Scot ;" the romance is, however, now forgot- 
ten. Coleridge, as we have seen in the article on Faustus, 
contemplated a drama, of which Scot was to be the hero, 
and numberless chap-books and children's story-books have 
spread the name and fame of the wizard far and wide. 

The fame of this man, if taken for what it is worth, is 
worth but little. His name alone survives; of his learning, 
the means whereby to determine his position in letters 
and science, we have little left. Roger Bacon thought 
very meanly of him ; but Leland, Pitts, Dempster, and 
David Buchanan have, according to Mr. Bruce, " endowed 
him, as they do every other man of whom they write, with 
all the accomplishments in the world. ' He ascended/ says 
Leland, * to the very summits of theology.' According to 
David Buchanan, he was particularly eminent as a physi- 
cian." Mr. Bruce's rebuke of the writers he names applies 
to many biographers; and it would seem that David 
Buchanan, simply because Michael was a Scotsman, not 
only endowed his hero with the skill of curing leprosy, gout, 
dropsy, and other incurable diseases, but has " heaped 



234 VARIA. 

upon Michael the knowledge of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, 
and Chaldee," while his real acquirements were not merely 
little Latin and less Greek, but Latin only, with a very im- 
perfect acquaintance with Arabic. Equally with his con- 
temporaries he could know little of Greek. What he did 
know was " through the unfaithful medium of the 
Arabians." " The writers," continues Mr. Bruce, " whom 
he quotes in his principal work are Hippocrates, Galen, and 
Pamphilus, amongst the ancients, and Constantinus Afer 
among the moderns. There is not an allusion to a 
Roman classic in the whole work." 

Michael Scot's reputation seems to us a splendid in- 
stance of the omne ignotum pro magnifico. If we try to 
read any of his works we soon grow tired with the bold 
assertions, the groundless surmises, and the nonsense of 
them. He is great on sneezing, and tells us why a certain 
number of sneezes made on entering on business is lucky; 
and that one from any member of the family during the 
night is good, while two is bad. In rising in the morning 
one is good, but two bad, &c* Of dreams, of births, of 
the height of men, the soles of the feet of women, of a 
dozen other galimatias, he discourses to his readers ; but 
it is doubtful whether he recounts one fact won by his own 
observation, f or one wise deduction from the facts of 



* The head of the chapter is as follows : — " Sternuto sternutas, est 
verbura et significat sternutare ; et haec sternutatio nugus nominis 
ipse idem est actus et quasi dicitur sternutatio." 

f That is, in the book quoted, Liber Phisionomie Magistri 
Michaelis Scot, cited by James Bruce. 



MICHAEL SCOT. 235 

others. As a specimen of his deductions he will tell us 
that a child is horn with his head foremost in order that 
he may see the world, that a boy's first cry is O. A, as if 
he said, O ! Adam, why didst thou sin ? While a girl 
child cries O. E, or O ! Eve, why wast thou guilty, 
through thee I endure a miserable life in this world." 

In his Liber Physionomie, cap. xiv, Michael discusses a 
variety of questions which are indicative of his time, just 
as those discussed by Sir Thomas Browne, in his " Vulgar 
Errors," tell us exhibit to us fairly his view of such mat- 
ters in his day. Michael tells us why people love their 
children more than their children love them ; why they 
love the eldest more than the rest ; why they love an only 
son more than one of several ; why a man loves his friend 
better than a stranger ; why a Christian does not love a 
Saracen ; why a man likes a dog better than a cat ; and 
a horse better than an ass ; a beast of any kind more than 
a stone ; earth more than water, and fire more than air. 

In the second book he solemnly warns us of the 
danger of meeting or keeping company with a man 
wanting an eye, or a leg, or an arm, as being unlucky ; 
and he says that there is not a creature which, if it be 
deprived of a member, does not change its nature into 
better or worse than ordinary, rarely better, he adds, if it 
live long. 

Shortly, we may conclude with his countryman, Mr. James 
Bruce, that the fame of Michael Scot is without any real 
foundation, although " from writers in the present day lie 
has received abundance of eulogiums." " These writers," 



236 VARIA. 

continues Mr. Bruce, " have concluded, in utter ignorance of 
either his works or his character, that, as in rude ages philo- 
sophers and men of true science have been looked upon as 
magicians, therefore Michael, having been regarded as a 
magician, must have been a philosopher and a man of 
science. This is the logic of all the useful knowledge 
writers of the nineteenth century, and is quite satisfactory 
to their readers." 




LODOWICK MUGGLETON. 



*<33t2y 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

A Remonstrance from the Eternal God ; declaring several Spiritual 
Transactions unto the Parliament and Commonwealth of England, 
$c, fyc. By John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton. 1651. 

The New Witnesses proved Old Heretics. By William Penn, 4to. 
London, 1672. 

A True Representation of the Absurd and Mischievous Principles of 
the Sect commonly known by the name of Muggletonians. London, 
1694. 





LODOWICK MUGGLETON. 

JONTENELLE in his " Dialogues of the 
Dead " — a reproduction of a familiar sub- 
ject which Landor's u Imaginary Conver- 
sation " has rendered more familiar still — 
brings the shade of Montaigne, that instant dismissed from 
the earth, to meet with that of Socrates, lonely and unac- 
companied, in Hades. The gossiping essayist is delighted 
to see one from whom he has so often quoted, and begs the 
philosopher to tell him of the grand age in which he lived, 
and of the great men by whom he was surrounded — of 
Plato and Phocion, Pericles and Alcibiades, " to whom," 
says Montaigne, " the men of his own days'formed so piti- 
able a contrast." To which Socrates — in a method by no 
means Socratic — replies, that Montaigne is altogether 
mistaken, that the age in which he lived was by no means 
grand, that people then did not by sluj means make the 
fuss over him which they do now, that distance and time, 
both grand enchanters, had magnified its virtues and 



240 VABIA. 

buried its faults ; and that, finally, the ages do not degene- 
rate, the world being always about the same compound of 
fools and wise men. 

This, which is not particularly new, is not particularly 
true. Ages do differ considerably, especially in outward 
forms, whether the proportion of wise men and fools be 
about the same or not. We differ so much, for instance, 
from the age of John Bunyan, Milton, and the more earnest 
thinkers of their day, that it is quite difficult to realize the 
men of their stamp. In the comedies of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, of Jonson, Massinger, and Shakerly Marmion, 
we find an extinct species of bully, soothsayer, spendthrift, 
puritan, or swaggerer, as interesting to the student of 
character as a bone of an icthyosaurus is to Mr. Water- 
house Hawkins. The fact is, that ages do change and 
characters die out. Perhaps Sam Weller and Becky 
Sharp may appear as strange to our descendants as do the 
" Copper Captain " and the " Koaring Girl " to us — in 
whom we can, indeed, trace scarcely one modern female 
trait, except that the young lady " dranke tobacco," and 
that the leaders of fashion imitated her, out of politeness 
no doubt, when entertained a few years ago on board the 
Pacha's yacht. 

But strangest of all strange characters was the fanatic 
and Puritanic professor of religion, with whom Butler has 
made us somewhat familiar. It no doubt suited the 
cavaliers to represent these people as always hypocrites ; 
but they were, in fact, as thoroughly in earnest as any 
body of men in the world : and one proof of this is that 



LODOWICK MUGGLETON. 241 

the j carried the world with them. Everybody joined in 
the religious cry : — 

The oyster-women lock'd their fish up, 
And trudg'd away to cry no bishop ; 
The mousetrap men laid savealls by, 
And 'gainst evil counsellors did cry. 
Some cry*d the Covenant instead 
Of pudding-pies and gingerbread ; 
Botchers left old clothes in the lurch, 
And fell to turn and patch the Church. 

Carried away and carrying others away as violently as 
any in this crowd of prophets — as earnest, and at the 
time more successful than their opponents, George Fox and 
William Penn — were two obscure men, John Reeve and 
Lodowick Muggleton, who achieved the honour of be- 
coming the founders of a sect of Christians which has but 
recently expired, after a duration of two hundred years. 
As every false prophet must have his first aider and abet- 
tor — as Mahomet had his Abubeker, and Joseph Smith 
his brother Hiram, so John Eeeve had his fervent disciple, 
Lodowick Muggleton, a mad tailor, whom he joined with 
him in his peculiar ministry, and pronounced to be his 
" mouth." About the year 1651 these two came promi- 
nently before the English people, already disturbed enough 
by so-called prophets, and for some time favoured the 
people every year or so with Epistles and Gospels which 
bear certainly a very distant resemblance to the Apostolic 
and Evangelic writings. The first of these is entitled : 
" A Remonstrance from the Eternal God ; declaring 



242 VARIA. 

several spiritual transactions unto the Parliament and 
Commonwealth of England, unto His Excellency the Lord 
General Cromwell, the Council of State, the Council of 
War, &c. (fee. By John Eeeve and Lodowick Muggle- 
ton, the two Last Witnesses and true Prophets imprisoned 
for the Testimony of Jesus Christ in Old Bridewell." 

Mad as have heen many of the indwellers of Old Bride- 
well, it never held a madder pair. It appears that in the 
year 1651 there were many Bichmonds in the field in the 
shape of prophets. To the first of these, one John Tanee, 
who had affirmed that there was " no Personal God," John 
Beeve and his " mouth " went, by virtue of a commission 
which they had received from the Omnipotent, and with 
well-chosen and hard texts so puzzled and belaboured him 
that he was fain to be still. Still they gave him no 
quarter, declaring that he and the Banters were " the 
cursed children of the Dragon-Devil Cain, sporting them- 
selves in all fleshly filthiness, as the people of Sodom and 
Gomorrah did, that they may justly be damned in them- 
selves in the great day of the Lord. And so much for all 
ungodly Banters and John Tanee their king." This is 
hard measure surely for the despised people called Ban- 
ters, of whom it will be remembered John Bunyan, pious 
and godly, was once one. Banter — from the Dutch randen, 
randien, delilare, says Bichardson — is one who tears a 
passion to tatters, to very rags, and was at that time 
almost a new name. Bichardson's earliest citations are 
from Cowley and Bishop Hall's Satires ; but certainly we do 
not hear that the Banters were by any means a vicious 



LODOWICK MUGGLETON. 243 

people. It seems, however, to have heen the peculiar pro- 
vince of Eeeve and Muggleton to " deal damnation round 
the land/' for the next prophet whom they damned was 
John Bobbins, then in the New Prison ; and him they ap- 
proached for the express purpose of pronouncing a sentence 
of eternal death against. And here we learn that the word 
Prophet, used after this time by Milton as meaning a 
preacher, had assumed a far more important meaning. 
" For this person," says Eeeve, " many people honoured as 
a God, for they fell on their faces before him af his feet, and 
called him their Lord and their God ; likewise he was 
pray'd unto, as unto a God. Moreover he gave them a law, 
commanding them not to mention the name of any other 
God but him (his) only." 

This madman might have been deemed by far too mad to 
yield to the two " commissionated prophets," as he had not 
yielded to the magistrates. Yet, after hearing the sen- 
tence, he bowed his head saying, " It is finished, the Lord's 
will be done ;" and " so much for John Bobbins." After 
this the two prophets were moved to deliver a general 
damning warning to all clergymen and ministers, forbid- 
ding them to preach unless commissioned by the two. As 
the Clergymen, Eanters, Shakers, Independents, and 
Quakers, did not pay the least attention to these warnings, 
Eeeve and Muggleton proceeded to further acts, and were 
straight " seized, apprehended, and committed to Newgate 
for our faith, by the Lord Mayor ;" upon which they at 
once damned the Lord Mayor and the " London Jewry " 
(the Mansion House was then in the Old Jewry), especially 



244 VABIA. . 

one Alderman Andrews. This occurred on October 15, 
1653 ; and being thus made martyrs, there was a great 
outpouring of that peculiar grace which made many 
believe in Eeeve and " his Mouth," Muggleton. 

Their next production is " A General Epistle from the 
Holy Spirit," dated from " Great Trinity Lane, at a 
Chandler's Shop, over against one Mr. Millis, a Brown 
Baker, near Bow Lane End, London ;" and in it they 
plainly assume to be the two last witnesses spoken of in 
the Revelation. They were, undoubtedly, well read in the 
Bible ; and, like John Bunyan, they took care to stick 
closely by it, never being without a text to quote in their 
support. An epistle of the Prophet Eeeve which follows, 
opens up somewhat more of their peculiar doctrines, which 
are, however, very undefined and foggy. The soul of man, 
they assert, is inseparably united to the body, with which 
it dies and will rise again. The sin against the Holy 
Ghost is the rejection of the truth as preached by Muggle- 
ton and Eeeve. God has the real body of a man, and it 
is blasphemous to assert that he is an impersonal God or 
Spirit. The Trinity is only a variety of names for God, 
who Himself came down to earth and suffered death, 
during which time Elias was His representative in heaven. 

The founders of a sect very little less erroneous than 
their own were the most violent opponents of the new 
prophets. The State having, notwithstanding their flattery 
of Oliver Cromwell, whom they represented as " Mortal 
Hebrew Jew " to whom all were to bow down, and whose 
acts in putting to death the king and assuming the Pio- 



LODOWICK MUOGLETON. 245 

tectorate they approved, quietly put them in prison, and 
left them there unnoticed, punishing them, indeed, by 
whippings for their cursings and blasphemies, but doing no 
more. William Penn and George Fox, who claimed for 
themselves a Divine revelation, set upon them with their 
pens, and would indeed, have taken more carnal weapons* to 
them if they could. These works continued for nearly 
twenty years, William Penn leading the way in a tract called 
" The New Witnesses proved Old Heretics "„ (4to. 1672), 
and another hand closing it by " A True Eepresentation of 
the Absurd and Mischievous Principles of a Sect commonly 
called the Muggletonians " (4to. London, 1694). Three 
years after this date, Muggleton, who had long survived 
his companion, died in great sanctity at the patriarchal 
age of eighty-eight. 

Perhaps, as little causes determine great events, it is 
only to his peculiar surname that Lodowick owes the 
honour of naming the sect — perhaps it was because he was 
the more energetic and the longer liver of the two. His 
other opponents, for there were many, for the honour of 
being the two last witnesses of the 11th chapter of Keve- 
lation, made no mark on the world. Who now hears of 
Bull and Varnum, of John Tanee and John Bobbins ? 
The people appear to have accepted, on good faith, the as- 
sertions of John Keeve and his Mouth, and, in the midst 
of dumb instructors, to have listened to any rash madman 
who choose to cry out loud enough. As Oliver Cromwell 
had been pronounced a " Mortal and Spiritual Jew, a 
natural Lion of the tribe of Judah, according to the flesh,' \ 



246 VABIA. 

to whom Muggleton was " coinmissionated " to give advice 
— which, to be fair, was very good of its kind — so also the 
people were told, " You that are spiritual may know that 
the Roman Gentiles spoken of by John, are those people 
by men called Cavileers], whose princely Race sprang from 
the loins of King Herod, that bloody persecutor of the 
Lord of Glory, and so streamed into the line of the tyran- 
nical lioman Empire, or Popedom" Whether this satis- 
fied candid inquirers we are not able to say. Some, in- 
deed, suggested that the Caviliers were Devil-born, and 
that Laud was Old Nick himself, just as others made 
Oliver and his Parliament derive all their spirit from the 
same diabolical source. 

A writer in one of the encyclopaedias, who tells us that 
a complete set of the works of Reeve and Muggleton was 
published by some of their modern followers in 1832 (it is 
far from complete), adds that these men held very singular 
and not very intelligible doctrines concerning angels and 
devils. According to them "the soul of man is united 
inseparably with the bod}^, with which it dies, and will rise 
again." This doctrine may be a mere expansion of the 
belief in the Church of England, which declares in its 
creed the resurrection of the body — an apostolic article of 
belief. The question therefore of what became of the soul 
during the interval between death and judgment was not 
unreasonably solved by Muggleton, supposing that it lay 
torpid and rose again to reanimate the body and to receive 
its due punishment or its gracious reward. As the doctrine 
of purgatory, to which perhaps our High Church people pre- 



LODOWIOK MUGGLETON. 247 

sentry may tend, was, and is by the Thirty-nine Articles 
declared to be a fond superstition and damnable error, 
having no warrantry in Scripture, where indeed there is 
not the shadow of the shade of a sentence (the book of 
the Maccabees being out of court) to be quoted in its 
favour. Muggleton's supposition that the soul subsides or 
is withdrawn from the body for a time, is not without 
reason. Xot one of us knows anything about it ; the 
question asked Lazarus* is still left unanswered; there 
lives no record of reply. Doctor Johnson arguing upon Kit 
Smart's madness, said that one charge against him was 
that he asked people to pray with him in the street, and 
said the doctor, " I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as with 
anybody else." So we may as lief believe with Lodowick 
Muggleton as to the indivisibility of the body and soul. 
Not so with his anthropomorphism. 

On the whole, Lodowick, if a blasphemous heretic, as 
William Penn called him, was infinitely purer and less 
mischievous than such prophets as Joseph Smith, Orson 
Pratt, and the rest of the Mormons. There is and there 
ever has been in the human mind a credulous disposition 

* " Where wert thou, brother, those four days ?" 
There lives no record of reply, 
Which telling what it is to die, 
Had surely added praise to praise. 

Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 

The rest reraaineth unreveal'd ; 

He told it not ; or something seal'd 
The lips of that evangelist. 

TENNYSON, In 3Jemoriam, xxxi. 



248 VARIA. 

to believe in men of strong will who have the madness or 
boldness to declare that the heavens have been opened to 
them, and the decrees of God made plain. Muggleton and 
Eeeve declared, indeed, that they were the last audible 
prophets from the Court of God ; but every age since then- 
time has seen its dozens of like prophets, of whom the 
world happily takes no heed, save when breaking the 
Queen's peace they render themselves amenable to the 
laws of that society which they pretend to purify. 

Muggleton, whilst he spread many errors, combated 
others. He was greatly opposed to those who believed 
only in King Jesus and his " Personal Reign " here 
on earth. "It is," he says, "rank folly to believe 
that men can read the designs of the Lord, and point out 
the day, the year, or the century in which the Lord's 
reign shall begin." But being himself " commissionated," 
he is permitted to know the names of the two last 
witnesses, and the time of their call. These were of course 
" Self and Co.;" and one part of their proof was that the 
witnesses were not to be clothed like citizens, Lord Mayors, 
and Aldermen, in silk and plush, but in sackcloth. Also, 
they were to be put to death ; and we greatly mistake the 
temper of the mad self-styled prophets if the very fact of 
their being permitted to die quietly in their beds was not 
the unkindest cut which they could receive from an un- 
grateful and an unbelieving world. 

The most curious work which they have left for the 
benefit of the spiritual discerning reader is called, " A 
Divine Looking-glass, or the Third and Last Testament 
of Our Lord, &c, whose personal Eesidence is seated on 



L0D0W1CK MUGGLETON. 249 

his Throne of Glory in another World." We omit many 
repetitions of the sacred names in giving these titles, for 
the two last Prophets were as fond of calling them out as 
is a Mussulman Fakir. In this last Testament the 
authors solve many scriptural riddles. They tell us of the 
form and nature of God from all eternity. They answer 
"the highest Querico concerning the eternal state of 
mankind/' They assert that there is " no reason in God/' 
and of what substances earth and water were from eternity. 
They tell us, but in so loose a manner that we are no wiser 
than before, of what form and nature angels were, and 
how they were created, and who Antichrist is ; and they 
are especially learned about " the Serpent that tempted 
Eve," who, they assert, was a very beautiful and graceful 
young angel in the form of man, who certainly did not offer 
to our common mother " a mere apple from a wooden tree," 
but, in fact, seduced her from her allegiance to Adam, and 
thus became actually the Father of Cain, and through him 
of all the wicked people or sons of the devil upon earth. 
But unfortunately we have heard all this before. " I 
should never have done," says Bayle, " were I to relate all 
the fictions that are to be found in books concerning Eve 
and the Serpent ;" and, indeed, from Josephus to Cajetan, 
Lanjado and Nicholas de Lyra, there have been some 
pretty theories broached, none more so than those by the 
over curious in the first and second centuries of the Church. 
" We are not to believe, therefore," sneers Bayle, " all 
the fine compliments which Alcimus Avitus reports to have 
passed on both sides ; for according to the narrative of 
Moses, this great affair was ended in a few words." 



250 VABIA. 

The remainder of the last Testament of these two 
prophets is filled with a great deal of what Mr. Carlyle 
terms " clotted nonsense." The authors flounder from 
Trinitarianism to Unitarianism, and in and out of each ; 
they condemn the unlawfulness of cutting off the head 
magistrate, and yet praise Cromwell ; they propagate more 
errors than they preach against ; they are ever ready with 
a " damnation to all eternity " for their opponents ; and, 
in short, they act like the wild, mad, hot Gospellers they 
were. Their books have a saddening effect on us. They 
prove how easily a little incoherent but vivid assertion with- 
out proof will attract the faith of man, without even an ap- 
peal to his cupidity or to his baser passions, such as have 
been made by other false prophets from Mohammed to Joe 
Smith the Mormon. Muggleton and Eeeve are singularly 
free from any such base appeals, nor do they make any ex- 
orbitant promises to their spiritually discerning brethren — 
never being, to use their own trope, at variance with what 
they thought to be true, " any more than William Lily and 
his learned brethren, in the astrologian figure, dare say the 
sun and moon were with themselves." Perhaps it is to this 
want of mixture of the worst traits of human folly in their 
scheme that they owe the decay of their sect. So late as 
1832 some of their followers reprinted in three volumes the 
Epistles and Gospels according to Muggleton ; but in the 
Census of 1851, their names had disappeared from the 
classification of sects and faith in the prophet Muggleton 
was not found upon the earth. 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

Rdigio Medici. The Eighth Edition, corrected and amended. With 
Annotations, never before published, upon all the obscure pas- 
sages. London, 1682. 

Observations on Religio Medici. By Sir Kenelm Digby. First 
Edition. 1682. 

Works of Sir Thomas Browne. Edited by Simon Wilkin, F.L.S. 
Three volumes. London, 1852. 

Urn Burial, Christian Morals, and Miscellanies. By Sir Thomas 
Browne. Edinburgh, 1825. 

The Retrospective Review. Art. vii. Vol. 1. Article, Sir Thomas 
Browne. London, 1820. 

The Eclectic Review. No. lxii. New Series. Article, Sir Thomas 
Browne. 







SIE THOMAS BKOWNE, 

llE THOMAS BROWNE is one of those 
writers who stand quite alone. There is no 
one like him either in the literature which he 
adorned, or in that of any other country. He 
is also one of whom we are never tired of hearing or of 
speculating, one whose very weaknesses are so peculiar 
that we would not part with them, and whose faults shine, 
in the eyes of some, with a lustre that surpasses the virtues 
of less original writers. His effect upon English litera- 
ture has heen very great indeed ; he seems to have inspired 
half-a-dozen at least of our most weighty preachers : and 
it was upon his style that Dr. Johnson formed his own, — a 
style upon which many of the most thoughtful and weighty, 
one indeed might say heavy, of our Quarterly reviewers and 
leader writers, yet huild their own, and which descended 
to, and was admired when practised by, Dr. Parr, although 
with him remained only the nodosities of the oak with- 



254 VARIA. 

out its strength.* And we must remember that even 
Johnson's best English was but an imitation, and many 
hold but a feeble imitation, of the splendour and 
piled-up grandeur which abounds in almost every work or 
pamphlet written by the Norwich physician. And yet few 
people read Browne's works, few, or comparatively few. 
They are, it is true, appreciated in America, where fine 
old English literature seems to have struck a new root, 
and to flourish with the luxuriance of plants which are 
happy in a virgin soul, and whose people, descendants of 
our own, of a freer and more reflective growth, often appre- 
ciate those writers whom we most neglect, as is the case 
with Mr. Herbert Spencer ; but in England Browne may 
well be classed as one who is but rarely read. A public 
writer and reviewer in conversation mistook him for Tom 
Brown, the facetious author of the " Laconics ;" and a lady, 
hearing the name, suggested that he might be a living 
author, and writer of Mr. Hughes's fresh and excellent 
book, " Tom Brown's School- days, "f 

* Speaking of Croft's imitation of Johnson's style, Burke said, 
" No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson ; it has all his pomp 
without his force ; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its 
strength ; it has all the contortions of the sybil without the inspira- 
tion." — Prior's Life of Burke. 

t How calmly ignorant some authors may be is seen in 
Lord Campbell's " Life of Chief Justice Hale." Hale believed in 
witchcraft, and tried and condemned, in 1665, very unrighteously 
alas, for direct evidence went in favour of their innocence, Amy 
Denny and Rose Cullender, two poor old women, who were accused 
of dealings with the devil. Sir Thomas Browne was an important 
witness in this trial ; but, as the " Eclectic Review " points out, 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 255 

A paper upon such a writer will therefore be surely not 
out of the way in this collection of bibliographic essays. 

" According to the common fate of orphans/' sa} 7 s Dr. 
Johnson, in a biography of this excellent writer, " Thomas 
Browne, when a minor, was defrauded by the lawyers and 
trustees of much of the fortune which was left him by his 
father, a rich merchant* of London, where his celebrated 
son was born in the year 1605. The family was a good 
one, for there then obtained none of that despicable and 
silly contempt for trade which is so hurtful to' those who 
feel and express it, and to those who endure it, since that 
which we openly despise soon degrades itself to the level 
of our contempt. When proud people look down upon 
tradesmen they are not philosophical enough to perceive 
that they are absolutely inviting those very tradesmen, 
whom they ask to bow and cringe, to repay themselves 
for their servility by a golden plaster for their wounded 
pride. Certainly like Erasmus and others, Browne suffered 
from his guardians, but was enabled to be educated first in 
London, then at Winchester, and finally at Broadgate 
Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford, which he entered 
when he was of age, and after due time took his degree 
of M.A. June 11th, 1629." 



Lord Campbell " either knew nothing about him or did not recognize 
him, for he is, as usual, inaccurate in his details, and throughout 
misspells his name, calling him Dr. Brown." 

* So Johnson ; but it would appear that this merchant was a rich 
tradesman, like Izaak Walton, a mercer, but a gentleman of good 
family in Cheshire. — See European Magazine, xi. p. 89. 



256 VARIA. 

His mother had married Sir Thomas Dutton, probably 
by the inducement of her fortune, says Johnson, and it 
may well have been so, for as the plays of Beaumont and 
Fletcher, and other contemporary writers, sufficiently prove, 
certain poor knights were ready enough to come into the 
city to pick up a golden cargo; and to marry a rich widow, 
as they would carry away an ugly picture, merely for the 
golden frame which surrounded it. Browne's mother, 
lady Dutton, took as her fortune three thousand pounds, a 
sum equal at least to twelve thousand pounds now, leaving 
her son, " by consequence, six thousand (this would be 
correct had he been an only child, but he had a brother 
and two sisters), a large sum for a man destined to learn- 
ing at that time, when commerce had not filled the nation 
with nominal riches" So speaks his pupil and admirer, 
Samuel Johnson. It is perhaps lucky for us that Sir 
Thomas Dutton and the rich widow, aided by the gen- 
tlemen of the long robe, made Sir Thomas Browne's for- 
tune somewhat less than it was. But it does not appear 
that the rapacity of his guardian, of which Johnson 
speaks, was ever resented by Browne. After taking his 
degree he settled in Oxfordshire, and practised physic ; but 
soon afterwards he quitted his settlement and accompanied 
his father-in-law, who had some employment in Ireland, in 
a visitation of the forts and castles, which the state of 
Ireland made necessary. 

He then left Britain altogether, and went to Montpelier 
and Padua, celebrated schools for physic, and, indeed, for 
the arts of astrology and necromancy. Beturning home 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 257 

about the year 1633, he visited Ley den, where he took 
his degree of Doctor of Physic, or, as Johnson has it, 
caused himself to be created doctor, no very difficult thing 
in those days for a graduate of Oxford. 

About the year 1634 he returned to London, and the 
next year he wrote his celebrated work, " The Religion of 
a Physician " (Religio Medici), which he declares himself, 
although one can scarcely believe him, was never intended 
for the press. It is but an unnatural thing for an author 
to write without any wish or desire for a public, and cer- 
tainly our doctor created around him a fit audience, though 
few, for he lent his essay to several friends, and one of 
these kind souls had it surreptitiously copied and printed. 
He suffered them (the MSS.) to wander from hand to 
hand, says Johnson, " till at last, without his own consent, 
they were, in 1642, given to a printer. This has, perhaps, 
sometimes befallen others ; and this I am willing to believe 
did really happen to Dr. Browne : but there is surely some 
reason to doubt the truth of the complaint so frequently 
made of surreptitious editions." 

Reason enough, but this does not concern us now. Let 
us be thankful that we have a whole and sound book, and 
one that the world would not willingly let die. Upon this 
book his fame principally rests, and indeed, with three or 
four other tractates included with it, such is the richness 
of our English literature, the "Religio Medici" would be 
all that one, who could not afford a large library, would 
demand. For this book contains specimens of all his 
beauties, his noble faith, bordering, in fact, on superstition, 

s 



258 TARIA. 

as if indeed that were a necessary supplement to a bold and 
noble faith, founded on the dictum of Tertullian, Certum est 
quia im-possibile est, and demanding a difficulty to exercise 
its strength, his tenderness, grandeur, pathos, wild sub- 
limity, richness of thought and word, are all there, as also 
his many latinising and quaint obscurities, and his some- 
times teasing paradoxes. 

Presuming the " Eeligio " to have been written in 1635, 
its author was then settled at Norwich, where his practice 
was very extensive, and where many patients resorted to 
him. He had there settled, says Wood, in the Athence 
Ooconienses, by the persuasion of Doctor Lushington, his 
tutor at Oxford, who was rector of Burnham Westgate, in 
the neighbourhood. In 1637 he was incorporated Doctor 
of Physic in Oxford, and in 1641 he married the daughter 
of Edward Mileham, Esq. of Burlingham, in Norfolk. 
With that county and town our London-born physician is 
eternally connected; one almost wishes that he was in- 
deed Norfolk-born, so thoroughly do the best and most 
learned inhabitants of the county and city appreciate the 
fame which their illustrious indweller has shed over 
them. 

Browne's marriage called down upon him some raillery 
from contemporary wits, for his book had been much read 
and very widely criticised. In Howell's Letters, Book I, 
No. 4, there is some rather broad fun made with a man 
who had expressed a very vivid, and no doubt an earnest 
wish that the generations of man might be carried on like 
those of plants and trees, and who had said some rude 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 259 

things of woman ; but it must be confessed in merely a 
humorous way. (i The whole world was made for man, 
but only a twelfth part of man for woman ;" and " man is 
the whole world, but woman only the rib or crooked part 
of him." These are sentences that will not break any 
woman's peace of mind, any more than will Tennyson's 
true-hearted declaration that " Woman is the lesser man." 
By his wife, Dame Dorothy Browne, Sir Thomas had a 
large family, and all these " turned out," as the world has 
it, very well. Dr. Edward, the eldest, was physician to 
St. Bartholomew's hospital and to the king, and five 
years before his death became President of the Col- 
lege of Physicians, to which he presented that portrait 
of his father lately exhibited at South Kensington. 
Thomas, the second son, died at the age of twenty-one, 
after having proved himself to be an able officer in a 
king's ship. The daughters were well married, and living 
peaceably at Norwich. The kind and patient physician to 
Bishop Hall, the most notable citizen of that ancient city, 
and distinguished above his fellow -citizens by being 
knighted by Charles II. when he visited Norwich, Sir 
Thomas Browne, ripened in age, wisdom, and fame, and 
died in 1682, like Shakespeare in this one point, that he 
deceased on his birthday, after a violent attack of the 
cholic, to which he had been a short time subject. He 
seems to have died as he had lived and grown old, 
very gracefully and nobly. He had asserted in his best 
book, when he was but thirty, that he could endure pain, 
even the cutting off of an arm without much noise ; so he 



260 VARIA. 

endured the pain of the cholic and fever with as " much 
patience as hath been seen in any man/' says a biographer, 
copying his style, " without any pretence of animosity, 
stoical apathy, or vanity of not being concerned thereat, 
or suffering no impeachment of happiness. Nihil agis 
dolor. I visited him near his end, when he had not 
strength to hear or speak much ; the last words which I 
did hear from him were, besides some expressions of dear- 
ness, that he did freely submit to the will of God, being 
without fear." 

His remains were buried in the church of St. Peter's, Man- 
croft, in Norwich — Le Neve, who says the cathedral, is mis- 
taken — a handsome old church above the market hill, which 
has (1866) recently been repaired and restored. His wife, 
Dame Dorothy Browne, who had been his true helpmeet for 
forty-one years, placed a Latin inscription on a mural tablet 
of the south pillar near the altar, which recites that there lies 
the body of Thomas Browne, M.D. et Miles, that he was a 
learned physician, very skilled in his art, that he was the 
author of " Religio Medici," u Pseudodoxia Epidemica," 
and other works, that he was well-known all over the 
world, per orbem notissimus, that he was most religious, 
honest, and learned, and that his most sorrowful wife 
("Da. Doroth. Br.") had piously placed that tablet to his 
memory. An English inscription, shorter, but to the same 
effect, is also added ; and on the opposite side of the chancel 
is the tomb which completes the history, that of Dame 
Dorothy Browne, his true wife, who survived her husband 
little more than two years. Of his coffin and its inscription, 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 261 

and other matters which have lately come to light, we shall 
have something to add at the conclusion of this paper. 

The publication of the " Eeligio Medici," was followed 
at due intervals by those of " Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or 
Vulgar Errors/' in seven books, of " Hydriotaphia, or Urn 
Burial/' of the " Garden of Cyrus," of " A Letter to a 
Friend upon the Occasion of the Death of a Friend," and 
the " Miscellany Tracts," some of which are very curious 
and quaint, as, for instance, that of the " Musseum Clausum," 
or "Bibliotheca Abscondita," wherein the author discourses 
of certain books and pictures which do not exist, and revels 
in the parade of a very curious learning. But the " Eeligio 
Medici," as it was his first, will always be considered his 
chief work. It jumped suddenly into fame. The Earl of 
Dorset recommended this book to Sir Kenelm Digby, and 
Digby, in twenty-four hours, part of which were spent in 
procuring and in reading the book, returned it, not with a 
letter, but with a book, in which there are " some just re- 
marks, acute censures, and profound speculations."* Such 
a review as that, issued by Sir Kenelm Digby, and ad- 
dressed to the Earl of Dorset, was enough to sell any 
work, the public read it with avidity, and booksellers 
showed an equal eagerness in pirating, with hack authors 
in imitating, it. So that in 1682, the year of his death, it 
had reached the eighth edition, which lies before me, the 
last published during the author's lifetime, but which is in 
reality the eleventh. It has a curious frontispiece of a 

* Dr. Johnson's Life of Browne. 



262 VABIA. 

man falling from a high, rock into the sea, but upheld by 
a hand from heaven ; written near his body are the words 
A Coelo Salus (there is safety, or salvation, from above), 
and beneath the plate an inscription, referring to the book 
only, which states that a copy was surreptitiously printed 
before under the same title, but that it is imperfect. 

It is well to be thus particular, because this frontispiece, 
which Simon "Wilkin does not appear to have seen, indi- 
cates very fully the religious tendencies of Sir Thomas 
Browne's mind. But just as hasty readers of prejudiced 
reviews could accuse the author of " Ecce Homo " of 
Atheism, so the enemies which his success raised up 
accused Browne also of that sin. And whatever may be said 
of either work, that it proceeded from an Atheistic mind 
is utterly absurd and untrue. Good and orthodox Chris- 
tians, like Dr. Johnson himself, have 'long ago received 
Browne as amongst themselves. It were an insult even 
to do as Dr. Johnson has done, namely, to select passages 
from the work to defend the author. The whole work is 
its best defence ; the whole life of the author, who every 
day went to church, and took the Sacrament every month, 
is the best answer to this cruel lying scandal. Beyond this 
the book suffered from imitations, the " Religion of a Phy- 
sician, the Religion of a Layman" (Lord Herbert); 
" Religio Jurisconsulti " — the Religion of a Lawyer ; 
the Beligion of a Physician" (Browne's title, but in 
English), by Edmund Gayton; the " Religion of a Stoic;" 
" Religio Clerici ; or, A Short Discourse on Atheism," 
by Sir G. M. ; and the " Religio Philosophi Peripatetici 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 263 

discutienda" — the Eeligion of a Peripatetic Philosopher 
(this was an earlier work, not an imitation); " Eeligio 
Militis " — the Layman's Eeligion ; " A Gentleman's Eeli- 
gion," in three parts ; and " Eeligio Bibliopola? " — the 
Eeligion of a Bookseller, written by a hack writer, Mr. 
Benjamin Bridgewater, of Trinity Coll. Camb. M.A. 
" Alas ! " says Dunton, " love and wine were the ruin of 
this ingenious gentleman;" possibly we may add to these 
two causes that of overwork thrust upon the poor fellow 
by the booksellers.* 

The occasion of the open avowal of Browne's faith was 
to refute the general scandal of his profession, which as- 
serts that where there are three physicians two are Atheists, 
ubi tres meclici duo Athei, and a wish to recite the causes of 
his belief, and to show, as he nobly says, that " I dare with- 
out usurpation assume the honourable style of a Christian ;" 
that he does not only owe that name to the font, nor to 
his education, but that he has examined and believed in 
his riper years and his confirmed judgment. It is curious 
that after such a declaration any one should have been so 
bold as to declare Browne an infidel; still more curious 
does it appear after reading such very beautiful, such 
wide and truly reverential sentences as these: — 

" Thus there are two Books from whence I collect my 
Divinity ; besides that written one of God, another of his 
servant Nature, that universal and publick manuscript, that 



* See Simon Wilkin's preface to his edition of Browne's Works, 
where these and other imitations are mentioned. 



264 VARIA. 

lies expans'd unto the eyes of all, those that never saw 
him in the one have discovered him in the other; this 
was the Scripture and Theology of the Heathens; the 
natural motion of the Sun made them more admire him, 
than its supernatural station did the Children of Israel ; the 
ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them 
than in the other all his Miracles ; surely the Heathens 
knew better how to joy n and read these mystical Letters, 
than we Christians, who cast a more careless Eye on these 
common Hieroglyphicks, and disdain to suck Divinity from 
the flowers of Nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore 
the name of Nature ; which I define not with the Schools 
to be the principle of motion and rest, but that streight 
and regular line, that settled and constant course the wis- 
dom of God hath ordained the actions of His creatures 
according to their several kinds. To make a revolution 
every day is the Nature of the Sun, because of that neces- 
sary course which God hath ordained it, from which it 
cannot swerve, by a faculty from that voice which first did 
give it motion. Now this course of Nature God seldome 
alters or perverts, but like an excellent Artist hath so con- 
trived his work, that with the self-same instrument, with- 
out a new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. 
Thus he sweetneth the Water with a Word, preserveth the 
creatures in the Ark, which the blast of his mouth might 
have as easily created ; for God is like a skilful Geome- 
trician, who when more easily and with one stroak of his 
Compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet 
rather do this in a circle or longer way ; according to the 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 265 

constituted and fore-laid principles of his art, yet this rule 
of his he doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the World 
with his Prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason 
should question his power, and conclude he could not ; and 
thus I call the effects of Nature the works of God, whose 
hand and instrument she only is ; and therefore to 
ascribe his actions unto her is to devolve the honour of the 
principal agent, upon the instrument ; which if with reason 
we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they 
have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of 
our writing. I hold there is a general beauty in the 
works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind of 
species of creature whatsoever; I cannot tell by what 
Logick we call a Toad, a Bear, or an Elephant ugly, they 
being created in those outward shapes and figures, which 
best express those actions of their inward forms. And 
having past that general Visitation of God who saw that 
all that he had made was good, that is comformable to his 
Will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and 
beauty ; there is no deformity but in Monstrosity, wherein 
notwithstanding there is a kind of Beauty. Nature so in- 
geniously contriving the irregular parts, as they become 
sometimes more remarkable than the principal Fabrics. To 
speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly 
or mis-shapen but the Chaos ; wherein notwithstanding to 
speak strictly there was no deformity, because no form, 
nor was it yet impregnant by the voice of God; now 
nature is not at variance with Art, nor Art with Nature, they 
being both servants of his Providence ; Art is the perfection 



266 VABIA. 

of Nature : were the World now as it was the sixth day, 
there were jet a Chaos. Nature hath made one World, and 
Art another. In brief, all thing are artificial ; for Nature 
is the Art of God." — Beligio Medici, pp. 31-33. 

He afterwards tells us that which must have bitterly 
offended the Puritans, while, on the other hand, much that 
he has written must have been equally unpalatable to the 
Romanists. He must have been regarded as a trimmer, 
because he steered clear of excesses on either side. But 
Sir Thomas was true to himself. In after-life he was the 
firm friend of Bishop Hall, who had, in his " Shaking 
of the Olive-tree" bewailed "the (Puritan) pulling up of 
brasses from the walls and graves, the destruction of 
painted glass, the breaking of monuments, the demolishing 
of curious stone work that had not any representation in 
the world, but only the fancy of the founder and the skill 
of the mason, the breaking up of the organs, and the toting 
and piping upon the destroyed organ pipes, and the hideous 
and sacrilegious rout and burning in the market place." 
Who would not bewail such work? And who will not so be- 
wail such other work when the excess of ritualism provokes 
it ? Against the good contained in the Romish Church, 
however, neither did Sir Thomas Browne, nor will any 
true Christian set himself. Browne writes thus nobly : — 

" Yet have I not so shaken hands with those desperate 
Resolvers ;* who had rather venture at large their decayed 
bottom, than bring her in to be new trimm'd in the Dock ; 

* In all editions this word is printed " resolutions ;'* which, as not 
being a proper antecedent to the relative, I have taken the liberty 
of altering. 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 267 

who had rather promiscuously retain all than abridge any, 
and obstinately be what they are, than what they have been, 
as to stand in Diameter and Swords point with them ; we 
have reformed from them not against them ; for omitting 
those Improperations and Terms of Scurrility betwixt us, 
which only difference our Affections, and not our Cause, 
there is between us, one common Name and Appellation, one 
Faith and necessary body of Principles common to us both, 
and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live 
with them, to enter their Churches in defect of ours, and 
either pray with them or for them ; I could never perceive 
any rational Consequence from those many Texts which pro- 
hibit the Children of Israel to pollute themselves with the 
Temples of the Heathens ; we being all Christians, and not 
divided by such detested impieties as might prophane our 
Prayers, or the place wherein we make them ; or that a 
resolved Conscience may not adore her Creator anywhere, 
especially in places devoted to his Service ; where if their 
Devotions offend him, mine may please him ; if theirs pro- 
fane it, mine may hallow it : Holy-water and Crucifix 
(dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judg- 
ment, nor abuse my devotion at all : I am I confess 
naturally inclined to that which misguided Zeal terms 
Superstition. My common conversation I do acknowledge 
austere, my behaviour full of rigour, sometimes not with- 
out morosity : yet at my Devotion I should violate my own 
arm rather than a Church, nor willingly defame the name 
of Saint or Martyr. 

" At the sight of a Cross or Crucifix I can dispense with 



268 VARIA. 

my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my 
Saviour ; I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless 
journeys of Pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of 
Fryars ; for though misplaced in Circumstances, there is 
something in it of Devotion. I could never hear the Ave- 
Mary Bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient war- 
rant because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err 
in all, that is, in silence and dumb contempt ; whilst there- 
fore they direct their Devotions to Her I offered mine to 
God, and rectifie the Errors of their Prayers by rightly 
ordering mine own." 

It is in the curious and nice questions of faith, in ques- 
tions old as the first opponents of Christianity, and new as 
Dr. Colenso's book, that Browne revels. These afford 
him strong nuts to try the teeth of his faith upon. He 
himself "could show a catalogue of doubts," he adds, "never 
yet imagined or questioned, as I know, which are not re- 
solved at the first hearing ; not fantastick queries or ob- 
jections of air, for I cannot hear of atoms in divinity. I 
can read the history of the pigeon that was sent out of the 
ark and returned no more, yet not question how she found 
out her mate that was left behind; that Lazarus was 
raised from the dead, and yet not demand where in the 
interim his soul awaited. Whether Eve was framed out 
of the rib of Adam I dispute not ; because I stand not yet 
assured which is the right side of man. That she w r as 
edified out of the rib of Adam I believe ; yet raise no 
question who shall rise with that rib at the resurrection. 
Likewise whether the world was created in autumn, sum- 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 269 

mer, or the spring ; because it was created in them all : 
for whatever sign the sun possesseth, those four seasons 
are actually existent." So he continues, and then grandly, 
as Samson broke the withies that bound him, he throws 
these doubts away. " There are (sic) a bundle of curiosities, 
not only in philosophy, but in divinity, p roposed and dis- 
cussed by men of most supposed abilities, which indeed 
are not worthy our vacant hours, much less our serious 
studies. Pieces fit only to be placed in Pantagruel's 
library, or bound up with Tartaretus' Be Modo Cacandi." 

It is in the " Letter to a Friend " that Sir Thomas 
achieves the most sublime heights ; and truly when read- 
ing these we find that the praise of Coleridge was not 
excessive, hardly, indeed, sufficient, when applied to the 
knight. For he is indeed " rich in various knowledge, 
exuberant in conceptions • and conceits ; contemplative, 
imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style 
and diction, though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and 
hyper-Latinistic. He is a quiet and sublime enthusiast, 
with a strong tinge of the fantast : the humourist constantly 
mingling with and flashing across the philosopher, as the 
darting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye." The 
following solemn passage, in which this sublime fantast 
meditates on a dying man, and resolves how he himself 
will pass away, is worthy of all the praise that Coleridge 
bestows upon his style : — 

" In this deliberate and creeping progress unto the 
grave, he was somewhat too young and of too noble a 
mind, to fall upon that stupid symptom observable in 



270 VABIA. 

divers persons near their journey's end, and which may be 
reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their last disease; 
that is to become more narrow-minded, miserable, and 
tenacious, unready to part with anything, when they are 
ready to part with all, and afraid to want when they 
have no time to spend ; meanwhile physicians who 
know that many are mad but in a single depraved imagi- 
nation, and one prevalent decipiency ; and that beside and 
out of such single deliriums, a man may meet with sober 
actions and good sense in bedlam ; cannot but smile to see 
the heirs and concerned relations gratulating themselves on 
the sober departure of their friends ; and though they be- 
hold such mad covetous passages, content to think they die 
in good understanding and in their sober senses. 

" Avarice which is not only infidelity but idolatry, either 
from covetous progeny or questuary education, had no root 
in his breast, who made good works the expression of his 
faith, and was big with desires unto public and lasting 
charities ; and surely where good wishes and charitable 
intentions exceed abilities, theoretical beneficency may be 
more than a dream. They build not castles in the air 
who would build churches on earth ; and though they 
leave no such structures here, may lay good foun- 
dations in heaven. In brief, his life and death were such 
that I could not blame them who wished the like, and 
almost to have been himself; almost, I say; for though 
we may wish the prosperous appurtenances of others, 
or to be another in his happy accidents, yet so intrin- 
sical is every man unto himself, that some doubt may 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 271 

be made, whether any would exchange his being or sub- 
stantially become another man. 

" He had wisely seen the world at home and abroad, and 
thereby observed under what variety men are deluded in 
the pursuit of that which is not here to be found. And 
although he had no opinion of reputed felicities below and 
apprehended men widely out in the estimate of such happi- 
ness, yet his sober contempt of the world, wrought no demo- 
critism or cynicism, no laughing or snarling at it, as well 
understanding there are not felicities in this world to satisfy 
a serious mind, and therefore, to soften the stream of our 
lives, we are fain to take in the reputed contentions of this 
world, to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes, and to 
make ourselves happy by eonsortion, opinion, or co-existi- 
mation ; for strictly to separate from received and custo- 
mary felicities, and to confine unto the rigour of realities, 
were to contract the consolation of our beings unto too 
uncomfortable circumscriptions. 

" Not to fear death, nor desire it, was short of his resolu- 
tion : to be dissolved, and be with Christ, was his dying 
ditty. He conceived his thread long, in no long course 
of years, and when he had scarce outlived the second life 
of Lazarus, esteeming it enough to approach the years of 
his Saviour, who so ordered his own human state, as not 
to be old upon earth. But to be content with death may 
be better than to desire it ; a miserable life may make us 
wish for death, but a virtuous one to rest in it ; which is 
the advantage of those resolved Christians, who, looking 
on death not only as the sting, but the period and end of 



272 VARIA. 

sin, the horizon and isthmus between this life and a better, 
and the death of this world but as a nativity of another, do 
contentedly submit unto the common necessity, and envy 
not Enoch or Elias. 

ei Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of 
those who destroy themselves, who, being afraid to live, 
run blindly upon their own death, which no man fears by 
experience, and the stoics had a notable doctrine to take 
away the fear thereof, that is, in such extremities, to 
desire that which is not to be avoided, and wish what 
might be feared, and so make evils voluntary, and to suit 
with their own desires, which took off the terror of them. 

" But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such 
fallacies, who, though they feared not death, were afraid 
to be their own executioners, and therefore thought it 
more wisdom to crucify their lusts than their bodies, to 
circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill 
themselves." 

Sir Thomas is very great in the art of approaching a 
climax, and leads us gently onwards till we are astonished 
with the force of the simple English words. And though 
the sublime fantast is seen everywhere even more than the 
careful builder-up of sentences, yet his careful research, 
his personal observation, his painstaking labour, and his 
finished accuracy should be especially noted by the student. 
" I take little pleasure," he says somewhere, " to drink the 
waters of knowledge, instar canis ad Nilum, like a dog at 
the Nile, as the proverb — a lick and away." Hence in 
his " Vulgar Errors," although there are some absurdities 



SIB TH02IAS BROWNE. 273 

doubtless which he still believes, yet there are numbers of 
errors which he corrects from his own observation, such 
as that of the Death Watch, the insect occasioning which 
noise he had observed and noted ; nor has modern science 
added, in that instance, much to our knowledge, save the 
Linnaean name. The absurdity of some of these errors 
is, of course, as a critic says, " obvious." And the critic 
cites some heads from Browne's note-book as particularly 
foolish, such as, " Whether children before they are forty 
days old laugh upon tickling ? Whether possession be 
not often mistaken for witchcraft, and many now thought to 
be bewitched that are indeed possessed ? " Now, from a 
physician who had very minutely studied his art, a question 
when children really laugh, an act betokening intelligence, 
or may grin spasmodically, is not so very ridiculous. The 
other matter is much deeper, and gives us the keynote to 
Sir Thomas Browne's character. We have seen that he 
has been accused of atheism by the unthinkers ; the truth 
is, his mind was so sincerely religious, and so truly devout, 
that in every word he wrote, and in every action of his 
life, we behold, as it were, a reference to the ever-present 
God. As he believed in a God, so he believed in a devil. 
Hence his undoubted faith in witchcraft, his by no means 
ridiculous query, whether possession be not often mistaken 
for witchcraft, and many now thought to be bewitched 
that are indeed possessed? Curiously, the resuscitated 
belief in spirits recalls this very powerfully, and assures 
us that Sir Thomas was, as usual, not ridiculous, but only 
much more serious and deep than his accusers. The ex- 

T 



274 VARIA. 

periences of Professor De Morgan, the attestations of the 
Howitts, of Mrs. S. C. Hall and her husband, and of a 
very well-known band of writers, the assertions of persons, 
of whom the present writer has seen some hundreds in a 
room, who could hardly be all rogues and dupes, assure us 
that there is something now abroad which answers very 
closely to demoniacal possession. A very philosophical 
writer indeed, if one little known, has asserted, after a seven 
years' study of the subject, that spiritualism is diabolism, 
and has traced very lucidly the similarity of agencies in 
the cases of witchcraft and spiritualism. Be that as it 
may, all that we wish here to maintain is that the mind of 
Sir Thomas Browne was of far too high a class for any 
reviewer to pronounce him ridiculous. We have seen that 
he believed in witchcraft, and in the year 1665, when 
Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, two old women of Lowe- 
stoft, were tried at Bury St. Edmund's upon the charge 
of bewitching people, he, then Dr. Thomas Browne, 
attested " that the devil did work upon the bodies of men 
and women in a natural foundation, that is, he did stir up 
and excite such humours superabounding in their bodies 
to a great excess, whereby he did in an extraordinary 
manner afflict them with such distempers as their bodies 
were most subject to." Truly a philosophical and Brownish 
view of witchcraft. Chief Justice Hale presided, and 
charged the jury, when, alas, there was but too good a 
reason to acquit, to convict the prisoners ; for, as a writer 
observes, u there is a vast difference between a witness 
who honestly deposes to abstract principles, and a judge 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 275 

and jury who carelessly apply those principles to the 
prisoners at the bar. 5 ' 

In 1716, Archdeacon Jeffery printed, at Cambridge, a 
work of Browne's, which, although heard of, had hitherto 
lain hidden from the public, and which had, indeed part 
of it, appeared in his " Letter to a Friend :" this is his 
" Christian Morals." The sonorous beauty of the sentences 
is quite unsurpassed in the English language, and the 
paradoxical quaintness of many, serves to fix them on one's 
memory, and to make the little book a golden one for 
sober thinkers. The first sentence, which, by the way, 
began the closing reflections in the " Letter to a Friend," 
will at once arrest the reader : — 

"Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulatory* 
track and narrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtu- 
ously ; leaven not good actions, nor render virtue dis- 
putable. 

" In this virtuous voyage of thy life hull not about like 
the ark, without the use of rudder, mast, or sail, and 
bound for no port. Let not disappointment cause des- 
pondency, nor difficulty despair. 

" Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by 
the extent of thy grave, and reckon thyself above the 
earth by the line thou must be contented with when under it. 

" When God forsakes us Satan also leaves us ; for such 
offenders he looks upon as sure and sealed up, and his 
temptations then needless unto them. 

* Narrow, like the walk of a rope dancer. — Dr. Johnson. 



276 VABIA. 

" The sick man's sacrifice is but a lame oblation. 

" Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, 
and think it more satisfaction to live richly than to die 
rich. 

" Trust not to the omnipotency of gold, and say not 
unto it, Thou art my confidence. Kiss not thy hand to 
that terrestrial Sun, nor bore thy ear unto its servitude. 
A slave unto mammon makes no servant unto God. 

" Persons lightly dipt, not grained in generous honesty, 
are but pale in goodness and faint hued in integrity. 

" Let not the law of thy country be the non-ultra of thy 
honesty ; nor think that always good enough which the 
law will make good. Narrow not the law of charity, 
equity, mercy. Join gospel righteousness with legal 
right. Be not a mere Gamaliel in the faith, but let thy 
Sermon in the Mount be thy targum unto the law of 
Sinai. 

"Let not the Sun in Capricorn* go down upon thy 
wrath, but write thy wrongs in ashes. Draw the curtain 
of night upon injuries, shut them up in the tower of 
oblivion, and let them be as though they had not been/' 

These are noble sentences, full of a true poetic ring; prose 
that, with very little transposition, might make verse worthy 
of Shakespeare himself. A critic, in a paper which assumes 
much, quarrelled with the present writer's interpretation 
of diabolism from Aiafidtoco, I calumniate, deceive, tra- 
duce ; what will the learned gentleman say to Sir Thomas 
Browne's derivation and injunction ? 

* When the days are shortest. 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 277 

"While thou so hotly disclaimest the devil, be not 
guilty of diabolism. Fall not into one name with that 
unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom thou so much 
abhorrest ; that is, to accuse, calumniate, backbite, whisper, 
detract, or sinistrously interpret others. Degenerous de- 
pravities and narrow-minded vices ! not only below St. 
Paul's noble Christian, but Aristotle's true gentleman." 

The " Musseum Clausum ; or, Bibliotheca Abscondita " 
has been well characterized as " the sport of a singular 
scholar." Emulating the singularity of others, Sir Thomas 
Browne appears to have rivalled Babelais in his " Cata- 
logue of Books in the Library of St. Victor." The tract 
is but a bare list of books, not those that we have, but 
those that we ought to have. They are indeed, as he 
terms them, " remarkable books, antiquities, pictures, 
and rarities of several kinds, scarce or never seen by any 
man living." The first is, " A Poem of Ovidius Xaso, 
written in the Gethick language during his exile at 
Tomos," <fec. Then follows "A letter of Quintus Cicero, 
which he wrote in answer to his brother, Marcus Tullius, 
desiring him an account of Britany, wherein are described 
the country, state, and manners of the Britans of that 
age." "A Submarine Herbal, describing the several 
vegetables found on the rocks, valleys, meadows at the 
bottom of the sea, with many sorts of alga, fucus, quercus, 
polygonum, gramen, and others not yet described." This 
has been partially done. " Seneca's Epistles to St. Paul " 
is certainly a book much to be desired, so are the " ' Duo 
Caesaris Anti-Catones ; ' two notable books of Julius 



278 VABIA. 

Caesar against Cato, mentioned by Livy," and much to be 
lamented is the loss of King Solomon's treatise "De 
Umbris Idearum," which Chicus Asculanus in his com- 
ment upon Sacroboseo would have us believe he saw in 
the library of the Duke of Bavaria." The " rarities " we 
do not so much desire, but a list of them opens to us a 
curious chamber in the knight's mind. Why should he 
desire " A neat crucifix made out of the cross-bone on a 
frog's head/' or the " Homeric battle of frogs and mice 
neatly described upon the chisel-bone of a pike's jaw," 
or " the skin of a snake bred out of the spinal marrow 
of a man." He who knows where all this treasure is, 
Browne concludes drily, " is a great Apollo ; I am sure I 
am not he." 

In his domestic correspondence Browne proves himself a 
very affectionate, careful, and indulgent father, looking after 
not only the temporal but the spiritual welfare of his sons. 
•" Honest Tom," he writes to his son Thomas travelling in 
France, " I hope by this time thou art got somewhat be- 
yond plaist-il, and ouy Monsieur, and durst ask a question 
and give an answer in French, and therefore now I hope 
you goe to the Protestant church to which must not be 
backward, for tho' their church order and discipline be 
different from ours, yet they agree with us in doctrine and 
the main of religion. Pray be careful to serve God in 
the first place. Thy writing is much mended, but still 
you forget to make points. I shall be glad if you get a 
handsome garb and gait. .Be temperate and sober the 
whole course of your life ; keep no bad or uncivil company ; 
be courteous and humble in your conversation, still shun- 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 279 

ning pudor rusticus." The wise Polonius* could not 
have given better advice. We have seen that the sons 
lived to his credit, and that Dr. Edward Browne, Presi- 
dent of the Koyal College of Surgeons, cherished the 
memory of his illustrious father. Xow and then we find 
a sign in letters from that father that Edward may have 
been slightly extravagant. " Espargnez vous," he writes 
in old French, " spare us as much as you can, for I am 
grown old, and have much anxiety and trouble to support 
my family." To us there is something very delicate in 
the old Knight's running into a foreign language when he 
would hint that his favourite son was not to make too 
heavy a pull upon his purse. With that son's son, " little 
Tommy," to amuse him — a little boy whom he loved ex- 
ceedingly and indulged in all sorts of childish amuse- 
ments, a pretty picture in a silver box from Flanders, 
Punch and his Wife, a show king and queen and ladies 
of honour, and a tumbler, a wooden fellow that turns his 
heels over his head," — Sir Thomas grew pleasantly old, and 
died, as we have seen, boldly and manfully when his time 
came. He was not unaddicted to verse, and had written 
that which Bishop Ken has imitated in his beautiful even- 
ing hymn : — f 



* A character always or almost always, mistaken by the players, 
and often by critics, as a mere maxim-babbler, with a touch of the 
pantaloon in him. 

f Teach me to live that I may dread 
The grave as little as my bed ; 
Teach me to die, so that I may 
Rise glorious at the awful day. 



280 VARIA. 

Sleep is a death, let me try 
By sleeping what it is to die I 
And as gently lay my head 
On my grave as on my bed. 
Howe'er I rest., great God, let me 
Awake again at last with Thee. 

Alas ! the banes of the good knight have rested not with- 
out disturbance in their grave. His skull,, which I have 
handled, adorns the Museum of Surgery in Norwich, 
rescued from private hands, and there deposited by Gr. W. 
W. Firth, Esq., to whom I am indebted for the following 
narrative of its invention by Mr. Robert Fitch, F.C.S. 

" In August, 1840, some workmen, who were employed 
in digging a vault in the chancel of the Church of St. 
Peter's, Mancroft, Norwich, accidentally broke, with a 
blow of the pick-axe, the lid of a coffin, which proved to 
be that of one whose residence within its walls conferred 
honour on Norwich in olden times. This circumstance 
afforded me an opportunity of inspecting the remains. 
The bones of the skeleton were found to be in good pre- 
servation, particularly those of the skull, the forehead was 
remarkably low and depressed, the head unusually long, 
the back part exhibiting an uncommon appearance of 
depth and capaciousness ; the brain was considerable in 
quantity, quite brown and unctuous ; the hair profuse and 
perfect, of a fine auburn colour, similar to that in the 
portrait presented to the Institute in 1847, and which is 
carefully preserved in the vestry of St. Peter's, Mancroft. 
The coffin plate, which was also broken, was of brass, in 
the form of a shield, and bore the following : — 



SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 281 

Amplissimus Vir 

D ns Thomas Browne Miles, Medicinae 

D r Annos Natus 77 Denatus 19 Die 

Mensis Octobris, Anno D n J 1682, hoc 

Loculo indormiens, Corporis Spagy- 

rici pulvere plumbum in aurum 

Convertit.* 

I succeeded in taking a few impressions from the plate, 
and have presented one, with a counter impression, to the 
Institute, to be deposited amongst the collection of the 
society. There was another singular circumstance con- 
nected with the discovery, the lead of which the coffin was 
made was completely decomposed, and changed to a 
carbonate, crumbling at the touch. Sir Thomas' mural 
monument is fixed to the south pillar of the altar, and 
opposite to this, upon the north pillar, is another mural 
monument to his lady, Dorothy Browne, who died three 
years after her husband ; the inscription is in verse, pro- 
bably written by their eldest son Edward, the physician to 
Charles the II, and president to the College of Physicians, 
as was also probably the inscription on the coffin plate of 
Sir Thomas Browne, of which the discovery has been 
described." t 



* Which I (G. F.) render thus :— 

" The very distinguished man, Sir Thomas Browne, Knight, Doctor 
of Medicine, aged 77 years, who died on the 19th of October, in the 
year of our Lord 1682, sleeping in this coffin of lead, by the dust 
of his alchemic body transmutes it into a coffer of gold." 

f From the proceedings of the Archaeological Institute at the 
Annual Meeting held at Norwich in 1847. 



282 VABIA. 

Mr. Firth has pointed out to me, in Sir Thomas Browne's 
" Urn-Burial," two passages, which, if not regarded as 
prophetic, have yet obtained a curious significance from 
the despoiling of the author's resting-place : — 

1. " But who knows the fate of his bones, or how often 
he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, 
or whither they are to be scattered ? " 

2. " To be knaved* out of our graves, to have our skulls 
made drinking bowls, and our bones turned into pipes to 
delight and sport our enemies, are tragical abominations, 
escaped in burning burials." f 

Much learned dust was raised even about the meaning 
of the epitaph, written doubtlessly by Dr. Edward Browne. J 



* Wilkins's ed. has iC gnawed." — I have no doubt incorrectly. — 
G. W. W. F. 

t Sir Thomas, it is almost needless to say, was wisely in favour 
of incremation. 

X I subjoin part of a letter from Mr. Fitch, who has taken great 
interest in the matter, in answer to a captious critic in the Norfolk 
Chronicle, who for " Spagyrici " would read " StagyricaB " (sic) : — 

" To Editor of Norfolk Chronicle. 

" Dear Sir, — Having furnished you with the inscription upon Sir 
Thomas Browne's coffin plate, permit me to reply to your corres- 
pondent S. N.'s emendations of it, which appear to me to serve no other 
purpose than to mystify a very clear passage. The word Spagyrici 
may not be classical, but it was much used in Browne's time by the 
writers in his profession. Boyle used it ; Johnson quotes it (surely 
no mean authorities), and it is the only word capable of expressing 
the sense intended. Your correspondent admits that the passage 
has allusion to the doctrine of the Alchemists, and yet singularly 



SIB THOMAS BROWNE. 283 

Neither the dictionary of Forcellini or of Freund, no, nor 
even that of Dr. Smith, which professes to include mediaeval 
and chemical words, contains the adjective spagyricus, 
and many persons have desired to alter and emendate the 
inscription. Dr. Johnson gives the word " Spagyrick, 
from Lot. spagyricus ; and adds that it was a word coined 
by Paracelsus from the Teutonic spaJcer, a searcher. The 
meaning he gives as u chymical." Spagyrist is therefore 
a chymist; and Johnson cites a passage from Boyle 
wherein that meditative philosopher has used it to signify 
an experimentaliser, "though," says he, speaking of 
a chemical change, "many naturalists cannot easily 
believe it, among the more curious spagyrists it be very 
well known." 

So here let us leave this spagyrical writer ; the spade 
of the sexton may have grated against that dear head, but 
it hurt not the busy brain. Curious eyes may gaze upon 
the brown emblem of mortality, and note the vast length 
and strangely small depth of skull, and materialists may 
laugh at the exploded rhetoric of a loving son, that the very 
coffin which held the rare old thinker was by an alchemic 
touch turned into gold ; but they who love our noble 
English literature well know that the boast has been ful- 
filled in regard to the best and undying portion of Sir 



rejects the only word by which they could have been described. 
The phrase is simple : * sleeping in this coffin, by the dust of his 
alchemic body he transmuteth lead into gold,' — viz. renders the 
base metal precious by making it the repository of his honoured 
remains, and thus doing what the alchemists vainly pretended to do." 



284 



VABIA. 



Thomas Browne, and that his thoughts, transmitted to 
paper, have indeed turned to something far nobler, more 
spiritual and imperishable than gold when received into the 
hearts of docile readers and teachable disciples. 




GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

Memoirs of * * * commonly known by the name of George 
P Salmanazar, a reputed native of Formosa, written by himself in 
order to be published after his death, fyc. fyc. He was the author 
of the " Jewish History," and "The Life of Christ in the Universal 
History " (added in MS. of the time on the title-page). Dublin, 
printed for J. Wilson, J. Exshaw, E. Watts, S. Cotter, J. Potts, 
and J. Williams. 1765. 

An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island 
subject to the Emperor of Japan, Giving an Account of the Religion , 
Manners, Customs, 8fc. of the Inhabitants. Together with a rela- 
tion of what happened to the author in his travels, 8fc. Second 
edition. By George Psalmanaazaar, a native of the island, now 
in London. Adorned with cuts, to which are added a map and a 
figure of an idol, not in the former edition. London, printed for 
Mat. Wotton, Abel Roper, and B. Lintot, in Fleet Street. 1705. 
Price 6s. 

Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, §»c. By Sir John Hawkins, Knight, 
(Johnsoniana.) London, 1859. 

Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. By Mrs. Piozzi, (Johnsoniana). 
London, 1859. 

Curiosities of Literature. By Isaac D'Israeli. A new edition, with 
Memoir and Notes, by his Son, the Right Hon. B. Disraeli. Vol. 
iii. (and note, vol. i.) London, 1859. 




GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 




R. YOUNG to an excellent poem has pre- 
fixed a telling title, " The Universal Pas- 
sion, Love of Fame; " and he cites Juvenal's 
tenth satire, " that the thirst for Fame ex- 
ceeds by far the thirst for virtue." Perhaps both of these 
satirists are, after all, somewhat in the wrong, although it 
is a bold thing to say. The love of Fame is a grand pas- 
sion, too grand to be widely felt. It is the last infirmity 
of great minds, as Milton tells us. It combines in itself 
too many noble feelings to be universal ; but what really 
is universal is that minor itching to be talked of and 
about — that wish to rise to sudden notoriety, that restless 
longing to become the head of a small circle, that small- 
beer ambition of being the chief in a parish, the leader in 
a deputation — in short, to be a notorious rather than a 
note- worthy man. All this, which is universal enough, 
may be put down rather to an ill-governed vanity than to 
a love of fame. The man who will be talked about does 
not much care whether his name be amongst the most 



288 VAEIA. 

fraudulent of bankrupts or in the list of recipients of the 
Victoria Cross, published in the same Gazette. Perhaps, 
as a matter of safety, he would have preferred the latter, 
with the exception that he would have had previously to 
have exposed his precious body to an almost certain death. 
Even when enduring the punishment which his crime 
brings with it, the victim of a voracious vanity exults 
that his name is before the world. Mrs. Catharine Wilson 
was, we are told, particularly anxious to know what the 
papers said of her ; it was the only anxiety she showed. 
Pullinger said that no one had excelled him in his gigan- 
tic fraud. Fauntleroy, a short time before he was executed, 
called for a glass, and when he saw the reflection of his 
face, was anxious that his portrait should not then be 
taken. " My God !" said he, " can this be the once hand- 
some, the notorious Henry Fauntleroy ? " And in our own 
time, the unctuous Sunday-school teacher Hocker, in 
reading some notes after his condemnation, remarked that 
" he was not then the gay young man which the world had 
known him." In short, there are very few foolishly bad 
men who could not be adduced as examples of this hungry 
vanity, or, as Wickliff and Chaucer would more properly 
call it, vain -glory. 

Forgers of manuscripts and literary impostors are es- 
pecially the dupes of this vain-glory ; and we are about to 
glance over one of the most extraordinary examples — 
namely, George Psalmanazar, the pretended native of 
Formosa; a man whose real name, so far as we can learn, 
is still buried in obscurity — who, himself learned for the 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 289 

age in which he lived, deceived some of the best scholars 
of his time, and died at an advanced age, a true penitent, 
and a useful member of society. Whatever may have 
been his name, George was born somewhere about the 
year 1650, and in Europe. His parents' names, and the 
place of his birth, he concealed, for a very good reason, 
whilst he was pretending to be a native of Formosa ; and 
for a still better, when he became a repentant man. He 
never divulged them, lest his sin and folly should bring 
disgrace on his family. We presume him to have been a 
native of Switzerland, or the South of France. " Out of 
Europe," he says, " I was not born, nor educated, nor 
even travelled, nor even went further northward than the 
Ehine in Germany, or Yorkshire in England." He was 
suspected of being a German, a Swede, or a Dane, nay, 
even an Englishman ; but he denied that he was a native 
of any of these countries. His parents were Koman 
Catholics, but somewhat biassed in favour of Protestantism, 
which would seem to argue that they lived where Protest- 
antism existed. His mother was a pious good woman, but 
before he was five years old he left her, and was taken many 
miles away by a Franciscan monk to be educated. This 
monk, who did not know much, recognised George's capa- 
cities, put him into a high class, pushed him forward, and, 
indeed, found that the boy possessed great talent in ac- 
quiring languages, and a tremendous ambition to excel. 

As he increased in years, our hero fell into the hands 
most fitted to teach him to deceive. Taught by a Domi- 
nican, he was well versed in all the subtleties of Thomas 

u 



290 VARIA. 

Aquinas ; lie soon found, like many other boys in those 
days, that he knew more than his masters ; and at last, 
dazed with the philosophy of Aquinas, he left his teachers, 
and came to a great city, where he was welcomed and 
made much of, and learned to use his edged tools of argu- 
ment. Determining to employ these, and pushed on by 
ambition, he began to read the Roman Catholic theology, 
with which he soon got disgusted, and proceeded to Avig- 
non to take the place of a tutor. Here he met with a 
hypocritical priest, who proved to him that many of the 
clergy no more believed in the doctrines of their Church 
than they did in the Grand Lhama of Thibet. The people 
were poor, the priests dissolute, and the honest Lutherans 
whom he met in the country and small towns very badly 
off; their " priests," as he calls them, being forced to 
keep small cabarets — some, no doubt, for mere subsistence, 
others, perhaps, as a pretence to get their followers to 
meet them under the cloak of going to a public-house. 
The young scholar found much distress and misery about, 
and discovered that it was, indeed, hard to rise in the world, 
either by talent or learning. He had no influence and 
little patience, and he resolved to try his fortunes in the 
world in a different way. He visited his parents, and, upon 
leaving them, determined to assume the character of an 
Irish pilgrim, who had been maltreated and turned out of 
England for his religion. With a long staff and a black 
gown the pretended pilgrim left home with rather a heavy 
heart. His direct route lay past the very university 
where he had studied theology; and he necessarily, 
therefore, turned out of the way. The road he took, 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 291 

although " a considerable high road," contained objects 
not calculated to reassure him, and its description may be 
quoted as exhibiting the state of the Continent at that 
time : " Now and then, at some lonely place, lay the 
carcass of a man rotting and stinking on the ground by 
the wayside, with a rope about his neck, which was fas- 
tened to a post about two or three yards distant ; and 
there were the bodies of highwaymen, or rather of soldiers, 
sailors, mariners, or even galley-slaves, disbanded after 
the peace of Kyswick, who, having neither home nor oc- 
cupation, used to infest the roads in troops, plunder 
towns and villages, and when taken were hanged at the 
county town by dozens, or even scores sometimes, after 
which, their bodies were thus exposed along the high- 
way, in terrorem. At other places one met with crosses, 
either of wood or stone, the highest not above two or three 
feet, with inscriptions to this purport : ' Pray for the soul 
of A.B., or, of a stranger who was found murdered near 
this spot.'"* So that Callot's wild pictures of the Mis- 
eries of War, wherein the trees bear the most plenteous 
crop of hanging ruffians that can be imagined, are true 
enough. Nay, even the exaggerated atrocities depicted 
in the modern illustrations of Gustave Dore are not by 
many shades too black. These " deterring objects" made 
our pilgrim associate himself with many people on the 

* Perhaps as fine a quasi contemporary picture as ever was 
drawn — and Thackeray excelled in the art of local and time colour- 
ing — is a picture somewhat similar to this and other passages in 
Psalmanazar, in the " Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.," one of 
Thackeray's earliest and best books. 



292 VARIA. 

road ; and, as an illustration of his vanity, it may be re- 
marked that he never once begged whilst his little store of 
money lasted, but spent that recklessly, like a gentleman, 
till the exigencies of the case threw him again on the pub- 
lic. At Lyons, where he hopes to meet with a harvest, an 
officer asks him whether he wants a viaticum, and George, 
not knowing the consequences of refusal, simply answers 
" yes ;" whereon the officer " claps twopence in his hand, 
and. walks him about the city, seeing many grand objects, 
to observe which he was not allowed to linger." At last 
he came to the opposite gate, whereat the officer pointing 
told him to take himself off, for there was his journey ; if 
he came back he would be punished. Plainly, therefore, 
the good people of Lyons were quite awake to the merits 
of pilgrims, real or pretended, and struck a balance be- 
tween charity and severity by providing them with a viati- 
cum of twopence, and showing them the door as quickly as 
possible. Our pilgrim was in great fear whether or no 
this conduct would be repeated at every great city, but he 
found that this was not the case. Sometimes he fared well, 
and even sumptuously ; he danced with beggars at fairs, 
and enjoyed himself in his wild way, for he was yet but a 
young man, and one cannot read his very dry, and some- 
what sorrowful narrative, without having the love of adven- 
ture stirred within one, and determining to follow Mr. 
Collins's example, to take a " cruise upon wheels." 

It is but fair to the impostor to state that, every now 
and then, he seems to be filled with sorrow and trouble for 
what he has done. The path of the most successful 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 293 

roguery is, after all, not a path of roses. All around the 
pretender was evidently an atmosphere of religious hum- 
bug, relieved only now and then by some bright spots, 
and these few and far between. If he saw one of these, 
he was led to regret that he ever passed himself off as an 
Irish Papist ; and when questioned on his sufferings, he is 
led to invent them. Dirt and low company had, besides, 
inflicted on him that disease which, in the time of John 
Wilkes, was popularly supposed to be natural with Scotch- 
men, and from this he can by no means escape. A Dutch 
officer at Liege engages him for some little time as a kind 
of general servitor and minor bully at a gaming-house, 
one also of general entertainment ; and, to make him do 
credit to the virtuous establishment, has him bled, phy- 
sicked, bathed, and scrubbed, but to no purpose. The 
" scabious disease" still clings to him. In one particular 
it is absolutely beneficial to him. About Liege there was 
a kind of pretended Beguin nuns,* who assumed that 
sacred habit merely for the sake of being procuresses to 
the fine, idle ladies of the town, the virtue of these fair 
Liegoises being evidently that of the ladies of the Count 
of Grammont, or of the dames described by M. Le Comte 
Bussy Eabutin; and, as our pilgrim or servitor was a 
good-looking young fellow, these " pretended Beguines " 
often made overtures to him, which were, of course, cut 
short by a nearer inspection of his hands and skin. The 
life with the Dutch officer at last proves hateful to him, 

* He speaks well of the real " Beguines, " as he calls them, and 
says that they were noted for prayerful ness and charity. 



294 VAEIA. 

and he escapes from him, and flies from the " seeming 
grandeur" of his house, and joins sqme soldiers, with 
whom he learns to drink, swear, dice, and fight. 

Having still an ear for curious learning, he one day 
listens to some Jesuit priests, who are talking of Japan, 
India, and China, the wondrous Insula Formosa, and the 
ravishing islands of the East. It is now impossible to 
realize the wild ideas which the bare mention of these 
unknown lands stirred up in the hearts of the hearers. 
The" bombastic Pistol, when he wishes greatly to interest 
his audience, does not hesitate to " speak of Africa and 
golden joys." As every countryman, before the days of 
stage-coaches, used to credit the hyperbolical expression 
that London streets were paved with gold, so, to the 
Western mind, the vision opened up by the name of the 
East was truly gorgeous. George felt this, and, had he 
loved Fame truly, he would have gone thither ; as he was 
only inflated by vainglory, he commenced forming his 
scheme of deception. He carefully treasured up what he 
had heard, and, knowing that he could not learn the 
language, undertook the immense task of making one. 
He invented names for the letters of his alphabet, formed 
upon it a new nomenclature, divided the year into twenty 
months, and laid the foundation of his imposture. 

In the meantime, some monks with whom he is wish 
to use him as a tool, and beg him to become " converted " 
—he was then a swearing soldier. " They took me," he 
says, "to a Capuchin of some piety who had been apprised 
of the intended visit and the purport of it. When we came 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 295 

to the monastery, we found the good old Capuchin sitting 
on the bench, in an outer room of it, facing the gate, with a 
lusty young woman kneeling before him, barking like a dog, 
and making a great many other antic postures and noises ; 
upon which I was told that she was possessed, and that the good 
father was exorcising the evil spirit out of her. Whether she 
was sent there on purpose or not, I know not; but I remem- 
ber to have seen her at some processions, and once or twice 
in church, in the same unaccountable attitudes." 

The power of face or of faith that these good priests 
were possessed of must have been immense. How could 
it have failed to have happened that, tickled by some 
gross part of their own humbug, both possessed and 
exorcist did not burst into a long and loud fit of uncon- 
trollable laughter? Surely, if such was not sometimes 
the case, hypocrisy must have driven away, as it always 
does, the Divine Spirit of Humour, which in this world is 
o ne of its most skilful and dreaded opponents. 

Arrested, after again wandering at the gate of the town, 
George finds an officer who takes a liking to him, and to 
him and upon him he first puts forth his grand lie. " He 
passed with him," he writes, " as a Japonese and a 
heathen, and was entered in his company under the name 
of Salamanazar, which since my coming to England I have 
altered by a letter or two, to make it somewhat different 
from that mentioned in the Book of Kings,* but whether 

* 2 Kings c. xvii. v. 3 — The King of Assyria who subdued 
Hoshea. " And he (Hoshea) did that which was evil in the sight 
of the Lord, but not as the Kings of Israel that were before him 



296 VABIA. 

my new captain believed or not what I told him, I was a 
great favourite with him." The officer was a Colonel 
Lauder, of the garrison of Sluys, and George, who had 
been more than once a soldier, and knew how to trail a 
pike, enlisted ; still, however, pretending to be a For- 
mosan native born, and once a bitter hater of Christi- 
anity, but since converted by the Jesuits. The simple 
Scotch Colonel appears to have believed all ; but amongst 
his officers was a chaplain of the name of Innes, a man 
utterly unprincipled, and desirous of escaping from his 
position and gaining preferment in the Church. This 
man, as acute as he was unprincipled, detected the im- 
posture at an early stage; but, nevertheless, persuaded 
his Colonel to take George Psalmanazar to London and to 
introduce him to the learned there as a precious convertite. 

Here, then, was the crucial experiment, and the genius 
of the impostor for a long time carried him through it 
successfully. He affected strange habits. He threw him- 
self on the pity of men. He declared that his love for 
our holy religion had caused him to undergo unheard-of 
cruelties, and afterwards to fly from his native land. And 
thus in his false narrative does he account for his conver- 
sion, which Innes, who had suspected the imposition all 
along, forced him to make so that the convert might 
thereby increase the popularity of the Eev. Mr. Innes. 

" Being thus (to my eternal Happiness I hope) con- 

Against him came up Shalmaneser, King of Assyria ; and Hoshea 
became his servant and gave him presents." The impostor's way of 
spelling the name looks even more Assyrian than this way. 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 297 

vinc'd of the truth of the Christian Religion, and being 
thorowly satisfied of the primitive purity of the Church of 
England, I earnestly desir'd to be a Member of that Com- 
munion. Then the Ministers who unsuccessfully disputed 
with me gave out, that my good Guide Mr. Innes did not 
convert me by strength of Arguments, but by large 
promises, or some other indirect means, which God knows 
is false. To stop these uncharitable reports, Mr. Innes 
and I went to Mr. Hattinga (the eldest Minister of Sluyse) 
and desired him to call a Consistory, and publickly ex- 
amine me about the reasonableness of my Conversion. 
Mr. Hattinga promis'd there should be a Consistory at 
seven of the Clock that Evening. Accordingly Mr. Innes 
and I went again at that hour and found the Consistory 
sitting ; it was compos'd of the two Butch and one French 
Minister, the rest of the members were Wine- sellers, 
Apothecaries and other Tradesmen ; hither also my Coll- 
onel, Captain, and the Captain-Lieutenant came to hear 
me ; but because I could not very readily express my self 
in Dutch (and none of them understood Latin, except Mr. 
Hattinga, and he indeed knew very little of it) they chose 
Monsieur D'Amalvy, the French Minister, to discourse me 
in French ; who said to me, ' Sir, the whole Consistory in 
general, and I in particular, rejoyce to see you resolv'd to 
be baptiz'd into the Christian Church, but I hope your 
conversion doth not proceed from any other motive than a 
true and conscientious Conviction.' 

" Mr. Innes and I both thought that this speech did not 
savour much of Charity ; and therefore I reply'd, ' Sir, I 



298 VARIA. 

came hither on purpose to declare the Eeasons of my 
Conversion, if the Consistory please to hear me.' Then we 
were ordered to withdraw ; and being called in, Monsieur 
D'Amalvy told me, ' That indeed they were very glad to 
see me so desirous to embrace Christianity, but that it was 
a little too soon for me to give an account of my Conversion : 
You should (says he) converse with us for three Weeks or 
a Month, and then we will publickly baptize you in our 
Great Church, where a rational account of your conversion 
may be much to the edification of the Congregation.' But 
I perceiving their design answer'd, 6 If it be not too soon 
for you to hear me, I am sure it is time for me to speak, 
I am thorowly convinc'd of the Truth of the Christian 
Religion, and am not willing the initiating Sacrament of 
Baptism should be long deferr'd ; wherefore if you think it 
not fit to hear me now, you must not take it amiss if I 
make all the haste I can to obtain the blessing of Baptism, 
whereby I may be made a Member of Christ, a Child of 
God, and an Inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven J Then 
they again desir'd us to withdraw, and when we came in, 
they advis'd me to follow their directions before given, and 
that they had nothing to add. So we took our leaves of 
them ; and in my way home, I agreed Mr. Innes should bap- 
tize me, without taking any more notice of the Consistory, 
But they, mistrusting what we intended, went to Brigadier 
Lauder (the Governour of Sluyse) and told him, that ' since 
Mr. Innes is of a different Communion from what is estab- 
lish'd in our Country, he ought not to Baptise the Convert.' 
The Brigadier reply'd, ( I am no Bishop, neither will I 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 299 

meddle with Church-Affairs ; however, I will send for this 
Formosan, and if he will consent, one of jou shall baptize 
him.' Accordingly I was sent for and ask'd whether I 
would be baptiz'd by one of these Ministers ? I reply'd, 
' Had I been, or if I intended to be, a Member of their 
Communion, then I would desire Baptism from their 
Hands ; but since Mr. Innes was the only Guide to whom 
I ow'd my Conversion, I hoped he might be allow' d to 
baptize me.' The Dutch Ministers answer'd, '„You say 
well, but the laws of our Country will not permit it.' To 
which I reply'd, ' 'Tis true I don't understand your Laws, 
but had the Jews of this place converted me to Judaism, I 
can't think you would have circumcis'd me.' Thus finding 
they could not prevail, they went away, telling Mr. Innes 
that they would complain to the States of Holland. A little 
while after came Deputies from the States to view our 
Garrison and Fortification ; then the complaint was made 
that Mr. Innes, a Minister of the Church of England, had 
taken the liberty there to baptize a Pagan that he had 
converted : But their Highnesses only smil'd at the Com- 
plaint. 

" In the mean while the Chaplain of our Regiment 
hearing of the contest thought to put an end to it, by 
saying to the Brigadier, ' Sir, I have one favour to beg of 
you, that you would please to hinder your Chaplain from 
Baptizing the Formosan he has converted, for that privilege 
no man can claim but my self, because I am Chaplain to 
the Eegiment. But my Captain being present reply'd, 
6 You are our Chaplain and the Convert my Soldier, but 



300 VAEIA. 

since (to your shame) you never attempted to convert him, 
I see no reason why you should baptize him.' Upon this 
the Chaplain went in a pet to the Collonel and desir'd him 
to imprison me. 'Why,' answer'd the Collonel, 'what evil 
has he done?' ' None that I know of,' reply 'd the Chaplain, 
' but I would have him so confined that nobody might speak 
to him but my self, for the Brigadier's Chaplain who 
converted him intends to baptize him, which would be a 
reproach to me.' But my Collonel was so far from com- 
plying with his request, that he told him 'He was an 
ignorant young man and knew not what he ask'd ; for says 
he, I would much rather Mr. Innes should baptize him 
than give offence to a new convert by such scandalous 
practises.' 

"So at last all obstacles being remov'd, by the grace of 
God, at about seven of the clock in the Evening, in the 
French Church, some of our officers and some of the Burg- 
hers being present, the Honourable Brigadier Lauder was 
my God-father and desir'd I might be christen'd by the 
name of George. 

" The next day I set about writing the Grounds and 
reasons of my Conversion to Christianity, the Objections 
I made, and the convincing solutions I received from Mr. 
Innes to bring me with him into England, in order to send 
me to the most celebrated University of Oxford ; as soon 
as my good Guide made this known, my God-father gave 
me a man out of his own Company to serve in my room 
and 1 w T as discharg'd; the officers and the Consistory 
giving me the following Testimonium ; the Original any 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 



301 



Man shall see that will give himself the trouble to come 
and see me : — 



V[ OUS soussignes certifions que 
±\ George Psalmanazaar, Na- 
tif de ville nomme la Belle 
Isle, dans la Japon, le quel a 
servi dans le Regiment de Bock- 
giihall pendant quelque terns, 
s'est converti a la Religion 
Chretienne & en estredevable 
aux soins & aux Instructions 
de Monsieur Innes, Aum6nier du 
Regiment de Lauder; Dieu 
aiant beni ses justes desseins, le 
dit George a renonce tres sin- 
cerement a l'ldolatrie Paienne 
pour croire en Jesus Christ nostre 
Redempteur. 

Depuis la Conversion il a vecu 
comme un bon Chretien doit 
vivre, & a edifie par sa bonne 
conduite tout ceux qui en ont 
et6 temoins. 

Nous done aiant reconnu en 
lui une droiture de Coeur, & 
beaucoup d'autres qualites qui 
le rendent recommandable, prions 
tons les gens de bien de lui 
donner les secours dontilpourra a 
avoir besoin dans la Creance que 
nous avons qu'il sera de toutes les 
manieres un digne Membre de 
PEglise de Jesus Christ. Fait 



w 



r E whose names are under- 
written do certify^ That 
George Psalmanaazaar,a Native 
of the Isle called Formosa near 
Japan, and who has for some time 
been a soldier in the Regiment of 
Buchwald, is now converted to 
the Christian Religion by the 
Charitable care and instruction 
of Mr. Innes, Chaplain to the 
Regiment of Lauder, God having 
so blessed his just designs, that 
the said George with all sincerity 
hath renounced his Pagan Idol- 
atry and believed in Jesus Christ 
our Redeemer. 

And that since his Conver- 
sion he hath behaved himself 
like a good Christian, and that 
his example has been edifying 
to all who have seen him. 

We then observing his In- 
tegrity and many other of his good 
qualities, think him worthy to be 
recommended to all good people, 
and we pray them to succour and 
assist him in all his necessities, 
hoping that he will always be a 
true member of the Church of 
Christ. Dated at Sluyse the 
23rd of May, 1703. 



a VEcluse le 23 de Mai, 1703. 

Sign'd and Seal'd by 
D' 'Buchwald, Collonel, De Van' G. Lauder, Brigadier, Abdias 
deuil, Lieutenant -Collonel, W. Hattinga, Minister of Sluyse, in 
F. Warnsdoff, Major. the name of the Consistory." 

The Bishop of London, to whom he was introduced, be- 
lieved all he said, and in pitying zeal extended both notice 
and protection to the fugitive. Innes, we believe, was re- 



302 VARIA. 

warded. By favour of the Bishop of Oxford, convenient 
apartments were prepared at that University, so that 
Psalmanazar might improve himself in his studies. He 
drew up in Latin an account of the island of Formosa, a 
not very inconsistent and entertaining work, which was 
translated, passed through the press, had a rapid sale, and 
was quoted without suspicion by Buffon and other more 
popular naturalists. 

To keep up the sham, Psalmanazar, as we may now 
call him, burnt candles in his rooms all night, slept in an 
arm-chair, not in his bed, ate roots and herbs, and drank 
only water, and was, perhaps, much more Japanese, in the 
English idea, than the Japanese themselves. His genius 
for imposture, and his immense memory, saved him for a 
long time from detection, although the keen scepticism of 
Doctors Halley, Mead, and Woodward, and the exceeding 
regularity and western style of his grammar, called down 
virulent and earnest denunciations of the imposition, and 
caused the learned to battle amongst themselves. In ex- 
cuse of the Bishops and others who were deceived, it must 
be remembered that Japan was a terra incognita, and 
that what was known of it, Psalmanazar had picked up 
and embodied in his account. He came back from Oxford 
to London with a version of the Church Catechism " in 
his native tongue," which was examined, and by the 
learned of the time pronounced to be — as it was — a real 
language, regular, grammatical, and capable of great elo- 
quence and beauty. He placed the order of letters very 
differently from our own, but it is significant that his 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 303 

alphabet forms a jargon easy to be remembered, and that 
the first letter of each name is our actual letter ; thus Am, 
Mem, Neu, Taph, Lamdo, Samdo, Vomera, Bagdo, 
Pedlo, are A, M, TS 9 T, L, S, V, B, and P. The figures of 
these signs, of which there are only twenty, are partly 
like Hebrew, and partly formed like Uncial letters, pro- 
bably haphazard. He translated the Apostles' Creed, the 
Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, while the Bev. 
Mr. Innes must have grinned a satiric approval of the sub- 
jects chosen for translation. So strong was Psalmanazar's 
memory that he baffled the ordinary methods of detection. 
He would translate, viva voce, a long list of English 
words, and when these were marked down, it is said, 
without his knowledge, he would affix the same terms to 
them three, six, or even twelve months afterwards. A 
greater effort of memory has, perhaps, never been heard of. 
At the full tide of success he gained both money and noto- 
riety ; and one of his contemporaries hints that he led an 
extravagant, and, sometimes, even an immoral life ; of 
such, however, we have little proof. 

It is now known that the Bev. Chaplain of Lauder's 
regiment had found him tripping in his vocabulary, and thus 
discovered his imposture. Doctors Meade, Halley, and 
others did not cease in their attacks ; but it is doubtful 
whether or not they would have prevailed. Innes, who 
knew all about his imposture, was the one who pulled the 
strings of the puppet. This man, who more resembles the 
villainous chaplains of Fielding, Hogarth, and Congreve 
than an English clergyman, had made Psalmanazar his 



304 VARIA. 

tool. Taking a passage of Cicero's " De Natura Deorum," 
he made George translate it into Fonnosan, and then 
after some days read it into Latin. The plan of Psal- 
manazar was unripe, and his dismay assured the cleric, who 
afterwards made use of him ; by his introduction he was 
made Chaplain General to the Forces in Portugal, a place 
wherein he indulged his " inveterate passion for wine and 
women." On his return to England he found Psal- 
manazar reformed and the public tired of him. Dr. Innes 
— his degree had been obtained of a Scotch University — 
then quietly appropriated a work of some merit, called 
" A modest Inquiry after Moral Virtue," which one might 
fancy a racy satire on such a man, and on the strength of 
the book obtained, from the Bishop of London, the living of 
Braintree, in Essex. The real author of the " Inquiry," 
an " Episcopal Clergyman of Scotland," finding out the 
fraud, made Dr. Innes disgorge the " copy money" of the 
book, and write an apology ; after which, exit Innes from 
these memoirs, living quietly at his illgotten living at 
Braintree, and, it is to be hoped, reforming. 

The Romanists, as George Psalmanazar was of the 
Anglican creed, went virulently against him, but others as 
warmly defended him. Advertisements in his favour 
were published in the " London Gazette ;" but in the 
meantime the impostor had become no longer one. He 
withdrew from life, became penitent upon reading Law's 
" Serious Call," and withdrew from society, not so much 
discovered and disgraced, as that he gradually dropped out 
of the view of the public. 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 305 

When Psalmanazar at last fully awoke to a full conscious- 
ness of his degraded position, he was only thirty-two years 
of age, and he lived upwards of fifty years after that ; and, 
so far as we can judge, during all that time he was a peni- 
tent man. He, at least, never paraded his penitence, hut 
supported himself hy writing for the booksellers ; and as 
those gentry did not pay their poor hacks very heavily, 
he must have had much difficulty in keeping body and soul 
together. Yet he never seems to have complained. He 
worked on periodical publications from seven in the morn- 
ing till seven at night, drinking nothing but tea, and a 
little w r eak punch as soon as he left off writing ; was em- 
ployed in the dry and laborious undertaking of a universal 
history, to execute which he conscientiously fitted himself, 
learning Hebrew, translating the Psalms, consulting 
various libraries, and, above all, saving his employers more 
than a hundred pounds in books by reading at Sion Col- 
lege ; and, although he did not openly confess his impos- 
ture, it is said he often owned it to his friends with sighs 
and tears. He had made other pretences, which perhaps 
irritated his medical opponents — these he also confessed. 
He pretended to heal himself of the gout by laudanum, yet 
he confesses he " had not the least tendency thereto ;" he 
took opium, and said that he had a secret method of strip- 
ping it of its pernicious effects by acids, " particularly the 
juice of Seville oranges." All these rogueries he rehearses 
in his last will and testament, published with his life after 
his death, in which he speaks of himself as " a poor, weak, 
sinful, and worthless creature, commonly known as George 

X 



306 VARIA. 

Psalmanazar." He only once attempts to excuse himself, 
and that weakly : — " I was, in some measure, unavoid- 
ably led into the base and shameful posture of passing my- 
self off as a native of Formosa, and a convert to Christianity, 
all of which was hatched out of my own brain, without re- 
gard to truth and honesty." Finally, he says, "I desire 
to be buried in the common burial-ground, in some obscure 
corner of it, in the lowest and cheapest manner, without 
coffin; laid in the earth, with nothing to hinder it from 
covering me all round." Such stand as his last words. As 
we read them we cannot but believe him to have been a sin- 
cere penitent ; and, whilst we abhor his deception, we must 
yet be struck with the originality and boldness of its con- 
ception, and the vast acquirements which it called forth, 
and the tact, cleverness, and nerve which the deceiver 
exhibited. 

His will is dated " Ironmonger Eow, in the parish of 
St. Luke's, Middlesex, April 23, 1752, O. S.," and in the 
seventy-third year of the writer's age. It was about this 
time that Dr. Johnson knew him and often visited him. 
"When I asked," says Mrs. Piozzi, iC who was the best man 
he had ever known, Dr. Johnson replied unexpectedly, 
' Psalmanazar.' He said also, that, 6 though a native of 
France, he possessed more of the English language than 
any one of the other foreigners who had fallen in his way.' " 
Piozzi adds that Psalmanazar's " pious and patient endur- 
ance of a tedious illness, ending in an exemplary death, 
confirmed the strong impression his merit had made on Dr. 
Johnson." " It is so very difficult," said he, " for a sick 



GEORGE PSALMANAZAR. 307 

man not to be a scoundrel. Oh, set the pillows soft, here is 
Mr. Grumbler *a-coniing. Ah ! let no air in for the world, 
Mr. Grumbler will be here presently." 

Mrs. Piozzi imagines that Psalmanazar had studied, 
adorned, and disgraced many religions, forgetting that the 
Formosan faith was quite a creature of his own brain, just 
as much as the religion of the inhabitants of Utopia 
was imagined by More, and that of Atlantis by Lord 
Bacon. 

From " Knight Hawkins," as Carlyle has it, we have 
another glimpse of Psalmanazar, as well as a proof of the 
exceeding delicacy of feeling of Dr. Johnson, which, in 
spite of his brusquerie to fine ladies and beaux, must have 
kept him always a gentleman. He, the doctor, said he 
had never seen the close of the life of any one that he 
wished so much his own to resemble as that of Psalmana- 
zar, for its purity and devotion. He told many anecdotes of 
him, and said that he supposed him, by his accent, to have 
been a Gascon ; " but that he spoke English with the city 
accent, and coarse enough." He for some years used to 
smoke his pipe and spend his evenings at a public-house 
near Old Street, where many people, and among them Dr. 
Johnson, who was admitted to his private friendship, went 
to see him. When the Doctor was asked if he had ever con- 
tradicted him, he said, " I should as soon thought of con- 
tradicting a bishop." When he was asked if he had ever 
mentioned Formosa before him, the Doctor exhibited that 
fine feeling we allude to, and said, " Sir, I was unwilling, I 
was afraid even to mention China." 



308 VARIA. 

It was on one of Johnson's visits to this interesting old 
man that, having adjourned to the public-house club, the 
Doctor took occasion, probably speaking of the acquire- 
ment of the Hebrew tongue, and much various learning by 
Psalmanazar, to remark, that the " human mind had a 
necessary tendency to improvement, and that it would fre- 
quently anticipate instruction and enable ingenious minds 
to acquire knowledge." " 6 Sir,' said a master tailor sit- 
ting by, ' that I deny ; I have had many apprentices, but 
never one that could make a coat till I had taken great 
pains in teaching him." This objection to his dogmatic 
and rather vapourish assertion must have struck Johnson, 
for he mentioned it many years afterwards to Sir John 
Hawkins. 

The will of Psalmanazar is dated, as we have seen, 
from Ironmonger Eow, 1752. Ten years afterwards he 
ratified it in these terms, being then in expectation of a 
speedy release from this world : — " January 1, 1762, being 
the day of the Circumcision of our Divine Lord, then, 
blessed be God, quite sound in my mind, but weak in my 
body, I do ratify and confirm the above particulars of 
my last will made." A few days after this he died, in the 
eighty-fourth year of his age, and so calmly that all who 
witnessed his dissolution were at once edified and awe- 
struck. A strange ending; strange, because happily so 
much at variance with the beginning of his life. 



THE HIGHWAYMAN— EEAL AND 
IDEAL. 



BOOKS CONSULTED. 

The Life of John Everett, who kept the Cock Tavern, in Fleet Street, 
and was executed at Tyburn, 20th February, 1729. Written by 
Himself. London, 1730. 

Eugene Aram : An Unfinished Tragedy. By Bulwer. 1849. 

The Chronicles of Crime; or, the New Newgate Calendar. By Cam- 
den Pelham, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law. London, W. 
Tegg, 1851. 

Rookwood: A Romance. By William Harrison Ainsworth. London, 
1857. 

Paul Clifford. By Sir E. L. Bulwer. London, 1862. 




THE HIGHWAYMAN— EEAL AND 
IDEAL. 

OTHING is at once so vulgar, so pernicious, 
or so outrageous in its results as imagina- 
tion without taste. When combined, the 
most delightful works will be the re- 
sult ; when separate, we can only expect falsehood, 
exaggeration, and the horribly grotesque, as well as too 
frequently that which is simply vicious. To Fancy, 
combined with taste, we may trace Milton's " Alle- 
gro" and " Penseroso," Shakespeare's " Tempest," Puck, 
Ariel, and a thousand delightful creations — the best works 
of the painter, the purest forms and idealisms of the sculp- 
tor. To the same power, uninformed, we owe the ghastly 
fancies of the Spanish painters, the grotesque vulgar cari- 
catures of the Germans ; we also owe to it the circumstance 
that with us murder is treated as one of the Fine Arts, 
and that thieves, highwaymen, common burglars, footpads, 
and prostitutes are elevated into the heroes and heroines of 
romance. We hardly know whether to pity or blame the 
authors of such books : where Nature has stayed her hand 



312 VABIA. 

and left out due knowledge, we must commiserate their 
condition ; if, on the other hand, they were capable of 
better, and turned it to the worse simply on account 
of vulgar taste, we hold that they are greatly to be 
condemned. We hear of one author who, very rightly, 
will not permit his own books to enter his own house ; and 
if others have any conscience, surely their old age will be 
made miserable by remembering that they have used the 
precious moments of their youth in inditing not a good 
matter, but a contemptible fiction, which the further it 
penetrates the more deeply will it corrupt. 

This worship of highwaymen, for instance, once all the 
rage, is a modern invention, and proceeded from one of 
the most conceited and foolish of brains. We shall not 
argue upon the matter, because we have only to place the 
real and ideal side by side to show that the writer is 
as foolish as false. Take honest Henry Fielding from the 
shelf, and people will find in his day, at least, the robber 
was painted in his true colours as a ruffian of the lowest 
type — of too low a calibre for any but the most brutal pas- 
sions and the most vulgar selfishness. But take " Paul 
Clifford " or " Jack Shephard," the creations of more 
modern brains, in hand ; we shall find that these low 
wretches are gifted with the sentimental feelings of the 
hero of romance, and often ejaculate sentences worthy of 
the cynic philosophy of a Rochefoucauld or a Chesterfield.* 

* Thus, for instance, in Bulwer's romance, which in his mature, 
or rather more than mature age, he has determinately defended, we 
find a highwayman speaking in the high-polite style. 



THE HIGHWAYMAN. 313 

The true hero of Mr. Ainsworth's " Eookwood " is 
Richard Turpin, and all the art of the writer is spent upon 
describing the celebrated ride to York and the equally 
wonderful Black Bess. In the Valhalla of highwaymen, 
Dick is permitted to share an immortality with this fine 
horse, and finds, like Pope's Indian, that — 

admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful mare shall bear him company. 

Dick, too, has much of the kingly bearing and magna- 
nimity of the hero, and when, after saving him by her 
fleetness, his mare dies, he weeps like a man of true feeling. 

" Dick's eyes were blinded as with rain. His triumph, 
though achieved, was forgotten, his own safety disregarded. 
He stood weeping and swearing like one beside himself. 

" ' And art thou gone, Bess?' cried he, in-a voice of 
agony, lifting up his courser's head, and kissing her lips, 
covered with bloodflecked foam. ' Gone, gone ! and I 
have killed the best steed that I ever crossed ! And for 
what?' added Dick, beating his brow with his clenched 
hand— < for what? for what?'" 

The illustrious author himself has told us how he felt 
when he wrote that celebrated passage. The feelings 
of Gibbon at Lausanne, after having written the last 
line of his magnum opus, were small compared with those 
of Ainsworth. After informing the public on the impor- 
tant point where he " achieved " this — at the Elms at 
Kilburn — he continues : — " Well do I remember the 
fever into which I was thrown during the time of compo- 
sition. My pen literally scoured over the pages. So 



314 VARIA. 

thoroughly did I identify myself with the flying highway- 
man, that once started I found it impossible to halt. 
Animated by kindred enthusiasm, I cleared every object 
in my path with as much facility as Turpin disposed of 
the impediments that beset his flight. In his company, 
I mounted the hill-side, dashed through the bustling vil- 
lage, swept over the desolate heath, threaded the silent 
street, plunged into the eddying stream, and kept an on- 
ward course — without pause, without hindrance, without 
fatigue. With him I shouted, sang, laughed, exulted, wept. 
Nor did I retire to rest till, in imagination, I heard the 
bell of York Minster toll forth the knell of poor Black 
Bess." 

This is fine writing, " a'most too fine," as the muffin- 
loving law stationer of Cook's court, so admirably described 
by Dickens, would say. It is to be hoped that all popular 
authors are not thrown into such ecstasies, or their land- 
ladies would simply wait, like Dick Swiveller's landlady, 
outside their doors from ^ye in the morning till half-past 
eight to give them warning when they came out. It is a 
pity, too, to spoil such fine writing by declaring that Tur- 
pin never rode to York, and that Black Bess never existed, 
save in the brain of the penny chap-book from which the 
great author probably obtained the creation. Let us see 
what the really dashing highwayman was. We must, in 
deference to space, ask our readers to call on their 
memories for the picture of the ideal. We quote from the 
" New Newgate Calendar," a trustworthy compilation by a 
Barrister of the Inner Temple, for that of the real high- 
wayman. 



THE HIGHWAYMAN. 315 

Turpin, says this gentleman, "was a petty pilferer, a 
heartless plunderer, a brutal murderer ;" he was the son 
of an Essex farmer, and early distinguished himself for the 
brutality of his disposition. Apprenticed to a butcher, he 
set up in that trade, and his earliest known essays in dis- 
honesty were those of stealing his neighbours' cattle, cut- 
ting them up, and thus underselling his rivals. The 
servants of Mr. Giles, of Plaistow, having by watching 
discovered him stealing two oxen, obtained a warrant for 
him ; but his wife giving him notice, he escaped from the 
back door while the officers were detained at his front. 
His wife then furnished him with money, and he hid in the 
hundreds of Essex, joining gangs of poachers and smug- 
glers, and often brutally illtreating his faithful wife. His 
brave companions — the Zoroaster, Jerry Juniper, and 
other rufflers, with the Knight of Malta (" to his side was 
girt a long and doughty sword, which he termed, in knightly 
phrase, Excalibur," &c.) — were a set of poor cowardly 
rogues whose bold plan was for one of them to knock at 
the doors of lone houses, ask for charity, and then the whole 
troop, rushing in, would rob and abuse the helpless in- 
mates. Old men and women were Turpin' s especial vic- 
tims. One old woman at Loughton "he threatened to set 
on the fire if she did not make immediate discovery (of her 
gold). She refused to give the desired information, on 
which the villain actually placed her on the fire, where he 
held her till the tormenting flames compelled her to dis- 
cover her hidden treasure." This was above four hundred 
pounds. Murder, arson, and rape were frequently com- 
mitted by this gang ; and, having made the county too hot 



316 VARIA. 

for him, Turpi n stole a horse, and took to the road. Here 
he met with Tom King, with whom he robbed in concert, 
and of whom he is represented in romance as the fast 
friend, whilst King is the fidus Achates of the iEneas of 
the road. But we cannot too often refute the foolish old 
saw of there being honour amongst thieves. King being 
arrested, and crying out for help, Turpin deliberately shot 
his friend, so that he should not " peach " (give informa- 
tion against him). " Dick," cried King, thinking that the 
shot was meant for the officer, " you have killed me." 
Nevertheless, he Hved for a week, and long enough to give 
information of his friend's hiding-place at Hackney-Marsh. 
Turpin then, to use the euphuism of this historian, " re- 
moved into Yorkshire," where he supported himself by a 
cunning mixture of horse stealing and horse dealing. 
Taken at last under his assumed name of John Palmer, 
found out by a returned letter, of which he had not paid the 
postage, he was tried, condemned, and executed. Finely as 
they dress this hero on the stage, he was so shabbily dressed 
— no sticking-plaster boots, silver-hilted swords, gold-laced 
hats, or velvet coats — that he bought " a new pair of 
pumps and a fustian frock to wear at the time of his death." 
He left a ring and some other articles to a " married 
woman," not his wife, with whom he had been cohabiting, 
trembled and turned white when he came to the ladder, 
stamped his foot with some bravado, mounted the ladder, 
and there " conversed with the executioner for half an hour 
before he threw himself off." 

Now fitted the halter, now traversed the cart, 
And often took leave, but seemed loath to depart. 



THE HIGHWAYMAN. 317 

We find we have made the trifling omission of a murder 
and a round dozen of brutalities in this short sketch, but 
such trifles are of little moment in the life of a hero. " It 
is needless to add that the story of the ride to York," 
writes the barrister, with some contempt, "and of the 
wondrous deeds of the highwayman's steed, Black Bess, 
are like many other tales of this fellow (!), the fabrications 
of some poetical hrain." 

That Turpin was but the ordinary highwayman, a vulgar 
fellow, who lived in constant dread of being taken by the 
thief- catcher, and who generally went to the gallows be- 
wailing his hard fate, and repenting of " burnt brandy and 
bad women," as the facetious Thomas Brown puts it, will 
be next shown by our extracts from the life of Mr. John 
Everett, wherein we see, to quote Thackeray's " Irish 
Sketch Book," speaking of Freeny, a notorious Irish foot- 
pad, "the exceeding inconvenience as well as hazard of 
the heroic highwayman's life, which a certain Ainsworth, 
in company with a certain Cruikshank, have (has) repre- 
sented as so poetic and brilliant, so prodigal of delightful 
adventure, so adorned with champagne, gold lace, and 
brocade." 

The gold lace and brocade, we may here remark, fade 
away altogether in the criminal trials, where copper-headed 
whips, tarnished silvered lace, and brass-hilted hangers 
purchased at Monmouth Street, adorn the thieves not much 
longer than a theatrical suit is worn by a stage highway- 
man. Even these poor suits, which rendered the vulgar 
faces and figures of the thieves all the more hideous, were 



318 VARIA. 

soon exchanged for the old wig worth " about twopence/' 
the rug coat or wrap-rascal, the old shoes and hayband 
stockings, in which they perpetrated their robberies. Mr. 
Everett was a soldier, he had " listed in the Foot-Guards 
of my Lord Albemarle's company, as a precaution against 
misfortune." Whilst there, he met with a companion, 
Richard Bird, and they agreed to desert and take to the 
road. One of their many adventures was to " stop a 
coach in the evening on Hounslow heath, in which, 
amongst other passengers, were two precise but courageous 
Quakers, who had the assurance to call us sons of violence, 
and, refusing to comply with our reasonable demands, 
jumped out of the coach to give battle, whereon we began 
a sharp engagement, and showed them that the arm of 
flesh was too strong for the spirit, which seemed to 
move very powerfully within them. After a sharp contest 

they submitted As they were stout fellows, 

and men every inch of them, we scorned to abuse them, 
but contented ourselves with rifling them of the mammon 
of unrighteousness which they had about them, which 
amounted to thirty or forty shillings, and their watches. 
There was a circumstance in this affair which created a 
little diversion. The precisians for the most part, though 
they are plain in their dress, wear the best of commodities, 
and though a smart toupee is an abomination, yet a bob or 
a natural of six or seven guineas' price is the modest cover- 
ing allowed by the saints. One of the prigs was well 
furnished in this particular ; and flattering myself it would 
become me, I resolved to make it lawful plunder. Without 
further ceremony than alleging that exchange was no rob- 



THE HIGHWAYMAN. 319 

bery, I napped his poll and dressed him in masquerade 
with an old black tie which I had purchased the day before 
of an antiquated Chelsea pensioner for half-a-crown. The 
other company, though in the doleful dumps for the loss of 
the coriander seed, could not forbear grinning at the 
metamorphosis ; for our Quaker looked more like a devil 
than a saint." 

After this, and u tipping " the coachman and guard (too 
often confederates) a " twelver to drink their healths/' the 
highwaymen brushed off. Everett, after several adventures, 
was apprehended, and remained three years in prison. 
He was even promoted to be turnkey, but he left this pro- 
fession to keep a thieves' alehouse, and to make up his 
brewer's bill again took to the road, purchasing " a brace 
of pistols, a hanger, a red rug coat, and a hat with a cock 
and a copper edging." Although he had " a nag that 
would fly like a hare and leap like a greyhound," he was 
taken at his first job, robbing a chariot with two ladies in 
it, — " the husband and miss's sweetheart," who were be- 
hind, pursuing him. He was condemned and hung, and 
confesses, naively enough, all his guilt, especially one 
" wilful per juration" 

" i I had,' says this gallant soldier, ' for some time en- 
tertained implacable hatred against one Picket, a cooper, 
and to satiate my revenge, though the poor man was 
entirely innocent of the fact laid to his charge, I swore it 
upon him, and appeared on evidence against him at the 
Old Bailey, for which wicked crime I hope God will forgive 
me for thirsting after innocent blood.' " 

Such an incident as this swearing away a man's life is 



320 VARIA. 

very heroic, and we commend it to the novelist who can 
dish it up in a most romantic way ; as has been done with 
other crimes. Even his sworn friend is betrayed by Everett. 
When taken up, he thinks it " better to hang twenty than 
get squeezed myself; so after some reluctancy, I im- 
peached my fellow man, Richard Bird. I was brought 
safe to Chelmsford gaol, where I appeared as evidence 
against my fellow man. He was capitally convicted, and 
suffered accordingly." 

The poor cowardly shifts, the meanness, the dirt and 
misery of these poor wretches are seen very well in the 
original Old Bailey Sessions papers. In proving the chain 
of life, how one animal depends on another, nay, often 
feeds on it, a professor the other day quoted Dr. Swift's 
well-known verse : — 

Big fieas have little fleas 

Upon their backs to bite 'era ; 
And little fleas have still less fleas, 

And so ad infinitum. 

The wretched highwayman had around him more wretched 
accomplices — horrible women, who often betrayed him, — 
Jews, informers, publicans, and a whole tribe of harpies. 
He himself was often only the creature of the thief- taker, 
who, for mere blood-money, would put him up to a 
robbery, inform against him, and hang him in due course. 
This was well understood by Jonathan Wild's gang, and 
constantly peeps out in the old trials. 

We have filled so much space in stripping the lace off 



THE HIGHWAYMAN. 321 

the highway, that we have little to say about the philoso- 
phic robber or murderer of Sir E. L. Bulwer Lytton. A 
more monstrous creation never proceeded from any brain. 
Horace's maxim is outraged. A man commits a murder 
— a low, brutal, cowardly murder — and Sir Edward thus 
defended it: — " The burning desires I have known — the 
resplendent visions I have mused — the sublime aspirings 
that have lifted me so often from sense and clay : these tell 
me, that whether for good or ill, I am a things of immor- 
tality, the creature of a God .... [After this 
profanity follows the excuse]. I have destroyed a man 
noxious to the world ! with the wealth by which he had 
afflicted society I have been the means of blessing many." 

Gan the folly and wickedness of perverted imagination 
go further ? Well may one of our satirists say, parodying 
the baronet's style : — " I would not have this doctrine 
vulgarly promulgated, for its general practice might chance 
to do harm. Think what would be the world's condition, 
were men without any Yearning after the Ideal to attempt 
to Ke-organize Society, to re-distribute Property, and to 
Avenge Wrong." 

Quitting satire, and remarking that every boy, in some 
sort or another, does truly worship the heroic, can we ima- 
gine what amount of harm must have been done by placing 
before youth the robber and the murderer as heroes, and 
not only palliating these crimes, but representing them as 
virtues ? To this base literature for how many Robsons 
and Redpaths is society indebted ? Nor have the faults 
of taste of the higher or richer novelists stayed with them- 



322 VABIA. 

selves. Their imitators are, indeed, numerous. From 
the time when it was first published until now there have 
been fifteen variations of " Jack Sheppard;" indeed, in 
one form or another, that book is perpetually reproduced. 
Hundreds of " Knights of the Eoad " and " Blueskins " 
have also appeared, and will appear. In vain the police 
attest day after day that youthful thieves are arrested 
with bundles of such literature in their boxes or pockets. 
The cheap press still teems with the nauseous stuff. We 
desire to recall this the more forcibly, because by far the 
cleverest sinner in this way, Bulwer, now by a grateful 
ministry made Lord Lytton, declares that, from " real or 
affected ignorance of the morality of fiction, a few critics 
reiterate the charge of selecting heroes from Newgate or 
investing murderers with interest " against him, and de- 
fends himself in a lofty way, as if he were right and the 
critics wrong. 




THE SPIRIT WORLD AND ITS 
LITERATURE. 



ffis^ 



BOOKS CONSULTED, 

Apparitions, a New Theory, By Newton Crosland, second edition,, 
revised and enlarged. London: Effingham Wilson. 1856. 

Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, with narrative illustra- 
tions by Robert Dale Owen, formerly Member of Congress and 
American Minister to Naples. London : Triibner and Co. 1860. 

Outlines of Ten Years' Investigations into the Phenomena of Modern 
Spiritualism, By Thomas P. Barkas. London: F. Pitman. 
1862. 

The Life of Wesley and the Rise and Progress of Methodism, By 
Robert Southey, Esq., LL.D. A new edition, with notes, by 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by the Rev. C. Cuthbert 
Southey, M.A. London, 1864. 




THE SPIRIT WORLD AND ITS 
LITERATURE.* 




ARTHST KOBKY, a pupil of the astronomer 
Kepler, is one whose doubt and recantation 
should be famous. He doubted, in the face 
of every proof, that the planet Jupiter had 
four satellites. " The earth," said Martin, " has only one ; 
why should Jupiter have four ? I never will concede his 
four planets to that Italian from Padua.'* So also the 
cardinals in full conclave would not concede to Galileo the 
movement of the earth ; and as they were in the strongest 
place, they tore up his treatises, made him swallow them 
and recant. He did so, but again asserted; a second 
time he had to swallow his theses and recant : but, as the 
old man rose, the celebrated words burst forth, " E piu si 
muove ! " He was right, but for being right he had 

* Amongst modern books which will eventually become very rare, 
the literature of the Spirit World is so curious that I have thought 
it worth while to include this article. It is to be hoped the reader 
will think with me. 



326 VAR1A. 

thenceforward to spend his life in prison. The religious 
conclave never dreamt of conceding that they might have 
heen mistaken, and in this case they were inferior to Martin 
Korky, who very sincerely repented. " I have taken him 
again into favour/' wrote Kepler to Galileo, " upon this 
express condition, to which he has agreed, that I am to 
show him Jupiter's satellites, and he is to see them, and 
own that they are there." 

Presuming every kind of scepticism were as easily laid 
as that of Martin, it would not do much harm. But Truth, 
like the Sybil's books, often grows smaller and smaller, 
whilst still the same price is demanded. God only can 
know the results of a determined and stupid ignorance 
which refuses to be taught. The effect of such does not 
end in only one generation, but, like a circle in the water, 
which never ceases to enlarge itself, so ignorance and error 
spread, with this difference — by wide spreading the circle 
is brought to nothing, while the error increases. Great, 
however, as is the evil of incredulity, on the other hand 
the evils of credulity are quite as bad. If we have on one 
side Scylla, we have on the other Charybdis. We may be 
in the frying-pan in one ; in the other we are surely in 
the fire. What are we to believe and what to reject ? these 
are the questions ; for every age deals in the marvellous, 
every person is naturally greedy of novelty. The modern 
world is not unlike that of Athens in the time of the 
Apostles : people go about seeking what they may wonder 
at. It is so pleasant to indulge Wonder ! Its organ, 
phrenologists tell us, is close to that of Hope, and the one 



THE SPIRIT WORLD. 327 

excites the other. If the faculty be pleasant, we cannot 
be surprised at its abuse. We can all talk learnedly about 
the unknown. Dr. Dash and the Reverend Blank can grow 
perfectly eloquent upon the glories of the world to come. 
It does not need the genius of Bunyan, who knew, by the 
way, when to drop the curtain, to expatiate on the wonders 
of the shining city ! That which we are told eye hath not 
seen, becomes as familiar to the oily tongue of the eloquent 
preacher as Regent Street, and as well trodden as White- 
chapel ; nor can we deny his statements. Wisdom holds 
her tongue, but fools rush in to describe. The voluble Miss 
Smith hurries off into ecstasies. "But might we not 
suppose, dear doctor ? " cried one of the class to Dr. 
Johnson. " Madam," said the honest old thinker, " we may 
suppose everything, but we know nothing." Taken in this 
light, we may honestly guard ourselves with a little in- 
credulity, and say with the Poet Laureate that 

There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds ; 

especially if half, or more than half the creeds are wrong ; 
for we must remember creeds arise and die out as well as 
other mundane matters. The creeds of some of our early 
Christian sects have gone as utterly as the worship of Isis, 
and popular religious delusions have numbered their thou- 
sands and hundreds of thousands of adherents, and now are 
only known from the answers which learned schoolmen 
thought fit to give to their errors. Religious error is 
almost immortal; its dissolution before perfect light and 



328 VARIA. 

knowledge will synchronize with that of the world ; but for 
that very reason we should guard against it as much as we 
can ; and, if we are ready to crush a budding error, we 
should be just as ready to help to raise a struggling truth, 

Some such remembrances as these are necessary before 
we enter into the consideration of our subject. It is 
therefore incumbent upon us to treat this matter firmly, 
but as wisely as we can, seeing that there are but very 
few indeed who have not read of the modern assertions, 
that disembodied spirits have the power of conversing with 
human beings, that they can make noises, play upon 
instruments, break flowers and carry them about the 
room, carry large tables to a great height, lift (as in 
the case with Mr. Home) a heavy man up in his chair, so 
that he shall float in the air about the ceiling, pinch peo- 
ple's legs, squeeze their hands, touch their lips, and ex- 
hibit their own forms (partially) as to white and dark 
hands, and (as it is asserted was done at the Tuileries) 
lift the warm and delicate hand of a disembodied spirit (?) 
to the lips of an Emperor for him to kiss. 

These are very startling facts to assert in the nine- 
teenth century, that boasted epoch of all knowledge. The 
assertions little more than two hundred years ago would 
have procured one's condemnation to a death by fire. Fifty 
years ago the asserter would, had he property, have been 
consigned to a mad-house. Twenty years ago he would 
have been laughed at as a dupe, or avoided as a charlatan ; 
to-day he is run after, listened to, applauded, and gains 
disciples. Amongst a people descendants of our own, 



THE SPIRIT WORLD. 329 

but more acutely nervous, the Spiritualists, as they call 
themselves, number nearly half a million ; and it is said 
that solemn and keen merchants keep a medium for the 
purpose of consulting him or her as to their success in 
business during the day. Certainly the Faith counts upon 
twenty periodicals in that free land, upon several in our 
own, and can number amidst its triumphs the production 
of such a work as the one second on our list, written 
by a man high in office, — an ambassador, in fact, of a 
first-rate power. Amongst its most prominent defenders 
and apostles are men and women of genius — artists, 
preachers, literary men, (that is, those of the trade of 
letters,) popular physicians, doctors, empirics, pub- 
lishers, and lawyers, comic writers, actors, and dissenting 
ministers. This is strange — certainly stranger than fic- 
tion. Whatever the cause may have been, the effect is 
remarkable. 

Now there are three points upon which we can stand. 
Either all these disciples are liars, and their productions 
lies and collusions ; or, secondly, they are all deceived 
themselves, but honest victims who deceive others; or, 
thirdly, the narrations are true, and are worthy of our 
deep and grave consideration ; and, as it appears to us, 
" Footfalls on the Boundary of another World," one of the 
most important productions of the body, is written to prove 
this last. 

The way in which Mr. Robert Dale Owen, who, it 
must be remembered, is the son of our old friend of ec- 
centric memory, Robert Owen, proceeds to establish the 



330 VAJRIA. 

truth of spiritual interference in the matters of this world, 
is very straightforward and very simple. He asserts, and 
easily proves his assertion, that we do not know all things ; 
that there are more things in Heaven and earth than are 
dreamt of in our philosophy, and that to declare that 
certain occurrences do not take place because we under- 
stand them not, is narrow and foolish. It is to place the 
extent of the world at the horizon of our vision. But, as 
we know there are lands and places beyond our vision, so 
we know there are matters which surpass our knowledge 
and our understanding. Our pleader next deprecates the 
expression of a judgment before we have thought on the 
matter ; for that is simply prejudgment or prejudice. We 
are not to contradict an assertion because it is strange, 
but rather^ as a stranger, give it welcome. Exposure of 
an error must come after investigation, never before it. 
We are told in the Proverbs that " He that answereth a 
matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." 
To deny actual phenomena is not the proper mode to 
win ' over a misled or diseased mind. Nothing can be 
more true than this. Had we always thus proceeded, we 
should have far advanced in philosophic inquiry ; but we 
and Mr. Dale Owen must remember that there are many 
useless semi-philosophic assertions which we can hardly 
disprove, although we feel that we know that they are false 
and useless. Many of the opponents of Paracelsus knew 
that his assertion that he had a familiar spirit in the 
pommel of his sword was perfectly untrue ; but, as they 
had never seen the sword, they could not disprove it. 



THE SPIRIT WOULD. 331 

When Lord Cochrane brought Lord Gambier to a court- 
martial, prejudice, ignorance, and incompetence triumphed 
over valour and knowledge, because the latter could not 
disprove assertions of the former, and Lord Cochrane lost 
his case. So also Admiral Byng was shot, while the 
Crimean blunders were left unpunished. 

The deduction from Mr. Owen's candid inquiries is 
that we should be seekers rather than judges, and that we 
should accept that which we cannot disprove; and this 
being conceded, he proves abundantly and easily that 
spirits and " ultra-mundane," or other-world interferences, 
have been talked of from the beginning ; that every age 
furnishes many well- authenticated narratives of these ap- 
pearances ; that Scripture does not deny spiritual appear- 
ances, but constantly affirms them; that history, sacred 
and profane, gives instances of them, such as the ap- 
pearance of Samuel to Saul, Csesar's wife's (Calphurnia's) 
dream, and the visit of Caesar's ghost or wraith to Brutus ; 
and that, as we cannot overthrow the testimony of such a 
cloud of witnesses, we are bound in honour to accept it as 
we would accept that of others in a court of law, and 
therefore believe in spiritual interference. We presume 
that these arguments have gained for Mr. Owen's book 
the praise of some contemporary critics, when they say 
that Mr. Owen's reasons are acute and logical, which we 
do not deny, that being certainly logical enough, only 
they simply prove what we already know as surely as that 
two and two make four. What other churches may say we 
know not, but every Christian community believes in 



332 VARIA. 

spiritual interferences. Our Church and that of Eome 
constantly affirm it ; the New Testament owes its vitality 
to the assertion. We believe in the orders of angels ; we 
agree that there are innumerable devils ; we talk of the 
host of Heaven, and of the multitude of the damned ; we 
pray against the machinations of the devil or man, and 
that " as Thy Holy angels do Thee service in Heaven, so 
they may succour and aid us here on earth." To an edu- 
cated Christian the possibility of spiritual interference, 
therefore, is as well known and recognised as the ex- 
istence of a world of spirits. Mr. Owen is consequently 
doing a perfectly unnecessary work as regards an English 
audience when he proves over again a spiritual existence ; 
so far we are with him. We agree entirely as to his pre- 
mises, but we must await his conclusions before we give 
him our judgment. 

After having set forth his argument, our spiritualist pro- 
duces his proofs ; and these are the gist of the book. They 
are perhaps the best collection of well-authenticated ghost 
stories ever written. There is not one, perhaps, which is 
entirely new, but every single one is entrancing in its 
interest, and the book deserves to be read, if only for its 
central portion. There is that narrative of the Wesley 
ghost, a spirit-rapping which pursued John Wesley's 
father for years at Epworth rectory, which knocked as 
loudly in the kitchen a as a huge piece of coal being 
broken to pieces," which pushed against Wesley's father, 
and which was heard over and over again by dozens of 
witnesses, and which used to be called " Old Jeffrey " by 



THE SPIRIT WORLD. 333 

one of the little girls ; nay, which would play with her, 
running and knocking from corner to corner, and which 
always knocked loudest when the good clergyman's family 
prayed for the king; the account of this is very suc- 
cinctly given, and abridged from Doctor Adam Clarke's 
memoirs of the Wesley family, where it covers forty-six 
pages. Then there is the story of the Wynyard ghost, 
that of Neville Norman's murder, and the dream at sea, 
Count Felkesheim's story of the " Iron Stove," that of 
Goethe's grandfather, of Mrs. Howitt's dream, and of a 
very curious dream of the widow of General Torrens ante- 
cedent to the Indian mutiny. These, as one will see, are 
not only old stories — not those of " the oldest aunt telling 
the saddest tale " — but of well-authenticated (and many 
modern) ghost narratives, and as such they deserve at- 
tention. 

While we are quite ready to concede the possibility of 
spiritual interference in the matters of this world, and have 
shown this belief to be no new thing, which scarcely needed 
the heavy lumbering of logical reasoning to prove it, we 
must at once deny our credence in the common spirits of 
the day, spirits which appear for no end, or merely to excite 
vulgar curiosity or village scandal. We cannot admit that 
the spirit of Shakespeare can be summoned at will to rap 
out nonsense or verses on the drawing-room table of a 
grocer at Clapham, nor that the spirit of Washington will 
be made to utter platitudes about liberty in the back room 
of a store in New York. If spirits are summoned from 
the vasty deep, they must come for more than that. We 



334 VARIA. 

must remember that the recognised spiritual appearances 
were all for some evident purpose which they accomplished 
— that thej all took place at some crisis in the world's 
history. The appearance of the apparition to Saul, the 
waking up of the dead at Jerusalem at the crucifixion, 
that solemn warning which Brutus had — all have left their 
marks on the world's history. The few other authenticated 
appearances throughout past ages have only been sufficient 
to keep alive the faith in the immortality of the soul, and 
Christians of every denomination have been quite justified 
in believing that since the times of the Apostles spiritual 
interference in worldly matters has ceased. Indeed the 
Founder of Christianity himself gave the death-blow to 
ghostly revelation. Nothing can be more plain than his 
declaration of the inutility of such; and, as usual, the 
teachings of the highest intelligence will be found consonant 
with common reason, common experience, and common 
sense. In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, the rich man 
in torments is represented still clothed in his fancied supe- 
riority, but touched with pity for his own kin, begging 
Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brethren. But the 
spiritual re-appearance on earth of the beggar at the rich 
man's beck and call is strictly forbidden. 

It is useless to warn people by spiritual interference. 
" They have Moses and the prophets ; if they hear not 
them, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from 
the dead." We cannot doubt this Divine dogma. The 
dead, if commonly and often appearing, would and could 
have no power over us ; and if appearing to one, why not 



THE SPIRIT WORLD. 335 

to another ? Why should not each have a special revela- 
tion ? Some of our north country families have an especial 
spirit, some of the Irish their own banshee. Why should 
not each family, rich and poor, keep its own ghost ? This 
would be the common deduction. To the Spiritualists it 
is the reductio ad absurdum ; and the ghosts, too, might 
have a word in it. They might say with Bulwer, in The 
Caxtons, " The kingdom of the dead is wide — why should 
the ghosts jostle us?" Why, indeed? Yet they have 
* jostled us, and are continually doing so in print, and have 
" jostled" the peace of many a private family away, and 
as many hundreds into madness. The commencement of 
this is worth inquiry; the time of it is remarkable. It 
is nothing less than in the very centre of the nineteenth 
century, an era of boasted civilisation and progress. The 
spirits first rapped in 1848, about the same time when 
Odillon Barrot, Ledru Bollin, and Louis Blanc were rap- 
ping down the throne of Louis Philippe, and three years 
before the century, culminating in the glory of the Exhibi- 
tion of 1 851, became over-glorious of its own progress and 
advancement. That Exhibition, like the numbering of 
the people, made us conscious of our own strength. We 
took stock of what we knew, and fancied that we knew 
everything. We had machines of all kinds, from the 
steam hammer to the cradle-rocking machine, and the 
sewing apparatus to the expanding man. It was a grand 
apotheosis of human intellect; but in the midst of our 
natural congratulations and bragging, those who did not 
believe in progress could point to great folly, and show us 



336 VABIA. 

that, much as we had done, the weakness of superstition 
had not jet died out of the mind of man ; and that, amidst 
believing Christians and philosophic materialists, whilst 
Stephenson was bridging space, and Faraday resolving the 
elements, there were those who were as ready to believe in 
a senseless Fetishism — if we may so term it — as any woolly- 
headed negro in St. Kitts. 

Acting on the already existing belief in spiritualism, or 
duped by some designing persons, a poor family in an 
obscure village in America was the first to promote the 
new schism, which has since distracted thousands. A small 
farmer, Mr. John D. Fox, resided in a wooden dwelling 
not far from Newark, in the county of Wayne, State of 
New York. The house is " a storey and a half high," 
whatever that may be. Mr. Fox was married, and had a 
family ; his wife and wife's sister were dreamers, and had 
visions. Soon after they had taken the house in January 
1848, they heard rappings, like the hammering of a shoe- 
maker; sometimes the door was shut with a slam, or a 
hand was laid upon the persons of people, and chairs were 
moved. Altogether the members of this excitable family 
were not very pleasant people to live with. The children 
cried out that a dog was lying on them, but it was gone 
before the mother could see. it. Mr. Fox rose every night, 
but could not find out the ghost ; and so the matter con- 
tinued for about four months, when Kate Fox, " a lively 
child," cried out as she snapped her fingers, " Here old 
Splitfoot, do as I do ! " The knocking instantly responded. 
That was the very commencement, says Mr. Owen, 



THE SPIRIT WORLD. 337 

solemnly ; who can tell where the end will be ? Where, 
indeed, of this flood of nonsense ? The lively child and the 
family also hit upon the method of the alphabet, and the 
ghost spelt out its name, and the letters inferred, or the 
Foxes did for them, that the spirit's name was Charles B. 
Rosma, that he (or it) was a pedler, who had been murdered 
by Mr. Bell, a former occupant, and buried in the cellar. 

This was pleasant for Mr. Bell; and a servant girl 
came forward and confirmed the statement that a pedler 
called, but that she had been sent out of the way for the 
night. The cellar was dug up, but nothing was found but 
about three bones, one of a skull, two from the hands ; 
but these might have been bones found, as they are 
everywhere, on the banks of a river. Mr. Bell came 
forward with an attestation of his character, signed by 
forty people, nearly all in Hydesville, that he was in- 
capable of such a crime, and so nothing came of it. 
Hundreds of people surrounded the house, as they did the 
cellar of the Cock Lane ghost, but the spirit would not 
rap till nearly dark. Books were published about it ; the 
Foxes may be said to have made their fortunes, and were 
engaged as media, or, as they call them, " mediums," that 
is, as professional rappers. Mr. Bell left the country with 
his character in his pocket, and the house has been taken 
by a farm -labourer, who never hears the raps, lives peace- 
ably, and " does not believe in spooks " (spirits). Such 
was the lame and impotent conclusion of a Heavenly, or at 
least spiritual interference. But the news of course spread, 
and was taken up by hundreds of believers. 

z 



338 VABIA. 

It is a pleasant sensation to believe in something new. 
Hundreds have believed in Joanna Southcott, Thorn of 
Canterbury , and Joe Smith. These prophets have had 
their martyrs and their victims ; the new dogma of spiritual 
interferences for the slightest purposes, or for no purposes 
at all, was to have its martyrs also. The first result of the 
Fox spirits was, that a young pedler, with a waggon and 
two horses, known to be possessed of several hundred 
dollars, disappeared. Public opinion at once said he had 
been murdered. An enthusiastic spiritualist had the sur- 
mise confirmed by raps. Through the same medium the 
credulous inquirer was told where the body lay in the 
canal. Several spots were dragged, but to no purpose. 
The dupe's wife was required to go to the same spot, 
where she nearly lost her life ; but some months after the 
alleged victim reappeared. He had departed secretly to 
Canada, to avoid his creditors, and by cheating them, had 
made capital out of the new belief. It does great credit 
to Mr. Owen to state that he frequently in his book brings 
forward these matters against the creed, as well as instances 
in its favour. 

The spirits were soon everywhere rampant, and people 
of a nervous and excitable temperament, those who could 
be easily acted upon by mesmerism, and put into a state 
of coma or mesmeric sleep, were found to be the media. 
The most enthusiastic believers in them have never denied 
that the spirits told an enormous number of lies. They 
also exhibited an alarming state of ignorance. Shakespeare 
writes nonsense verses when in the spirit, Bacon makes 



THE SPIRIT WORLD. 339 

monstrous mistakes ; Plato talks the veriest commonplaces, 
and Cicero is not eloquent. Had any great man departed, 
his spirit was at once summoned. Fathers called up through 
these media the spirits of their lost children, mothers con- 
versed hy rapping with their daughters, children with their 
parents, husbands with their wives. Did anything happen 
to be revealed or guessed at, at all consonant with truth, a 
great fuss was made, and the fact published far and wide ; 
was nothing evolved or anything mistaken, and falsehoods 
alleged, it was said that the " spirits " were not in a good 
humour, or that they purposely deceived. 

Mr. Owen quotes some pertinent lines, which show us 
how far they were to be credited. They are in the form 
of a remonstrance with the spirits : — 

If in your new estate you cannot rest, 

But must return, oh ! grant us this request : 

Come with a noble and celestial air, 

And prove your titles to the names you bear ; 

Give some clear token of your heavenly birth ; 

Write as good English as you wrote on earth ; 

And, what were once superfluous to advise, 

Don't tell, I beg you, such egregious lies. 

But, in spite of lies and mistakes, the number of disciples 
every day grew larger, and the printing press was called 
in to expand the doctrine. It must be said, greatly to the 
honour of the press and the pulpit, that both have written 
and preached against the folly ; but there were many not 
proof against the tickling vanity of wishing to believe. 
And many disappointed and second-rate writers and 
preachers went over to the camp of Rappers. In England; 



340 VABIA. 

as well as the rest of the world, they made head-way. 
Tables were turned, keys and Bibles flew about the room ; 
and, if testimony is of any value, men were lifted up and 
carried to the ceiling, spirit hands plucked flowers, com- 
posed tunes, and played them ; painted pictures of Heaven's 
flowers, read books through their covers, and two years 
after Sir John Franklin's death, a clairvoyant medium 
described him as alive and well, but very sad, sitting with 
his companions on the ice ! We now know how true that 
was. 

To sum up all, we may add that now spirit-rapping 
seems as lively as ever. In our own circle of friends we 
number many believers, but they one and all add that they 
do not see any use in the creed. The raps are supra -mun- 
dane, and therefore not likely to be put to worldly use. 
There are many media in London, but they are generally 
illiterate, and will not perform — or the spirits will not — till 
after dusk ! They live on the credulity of the incredulous ; 
for it must be added that the majority of educated spirit- 
ualists were religious sceptics before they grasped at this 
shadow. The unbelievers in the matter seem divided as 
to the character of these raps, some holding that they are 
the work of the devil, others that they are all a sham and 
a delusion. The plain, straightforward Christian is pre- 
pared and forearmed in either case. He cannot believe 
that the souls of the departed can be called up to entertain 
a party of ladies in a drawing-room, or of curious nobodies 
in a public-house tap-room, nor that a divinely-visited 
woman, like Mrs. Marshal, would be permitted to let out 



THE SPIRIT WORLD. 341 

her inspiration for ten shillings a night, and while deliver- 
ing the very oracles of Heaven, would speak bad English. 
Mr. Barkas, whose book is the most philosophical, and 
whose enquiries seem to have been the most regular and 
properly disciplined of those of any one spiritual writer, 
holds that the phenomena result from a very low form of 
diabolism. This is conceding part of their claim, and this 
concession we are unwilling to make. If it be necessary 
that spirits should manifest themselves, we can wait till 
the matter culminates, and believe it possible when it does 
do so. Till then we can rest upon our own creed, firmly 
convinced that in this doctrine of playing with a future 
state there is but one step from the sublime to the wicked 
and ridiculous, and that the Eappers have taken it; for 
very surely, if we may judge of immortality from the 
manifestations made public, our souls must revolt thereat, 
since, if they be true, death is degradation. 



THE END. 



CHISWICK PRESS: — PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, 
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. 







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